Victim of Random Shooting Dies After Being Taken Off Life Support

On Wednesday, Ronald J. Kleker made a parent’s most difficult decision: At 11:16 a.m. he ordered doctors to remove his 26-year-old son and namesake from the machines that kept his body alive.

Ronald G. Kleker, described by friends and co-workers as an energetic young man with big plans for his future, was shot in the head Monday night in an apparently random attack as he drove along Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills. He lost consciousness immediately and was being kept alive by life support equipment at Northridge Hospital Medical Center where doctors said he was brain dead.

“We know this is the way he would have wanted it,” his stepmother, Caryl Kleker, said of the decision to disconnect him from the machines. “He would not have wanted to hang on like that.”

Ronald G. Kleker, an administrative assistant at a Century City law firm for the last five years, had just bought a pack of cigarettes and was on his way to meet a friend when a bullet shattered the passenger’s side window and ripped into his head. Witnesses said he swerved across traffic and crashed into a mailbox. He was found slumped against the steering wheel of his black 1989 Ford Probe, his first new car.

“He was like our little brother,” said Roseann Alvarez, a secretary at the law offices of King, Weiser, Edelman and Bazar. “They don’t make kids like that anymore. . . . Ron could do everything. He was very honest. He had a lot of energy.”

There are no leads in the killing, Los Angeles Police Detective Rick Swanston said.

Several residents around Victory Boulevard and Fallbrook Avenue reported hearing shots sometime during the evening, but none could say for sure if they were at 9:15 p.m., the time Kleker was shot. The only bullet known to have been shot remains lodged in Kleker’s head. Swanston said police did not know if Kleker was killed intentionally or by a stray bullet.

“We just don’t know,” he said.

Kleker was a graduate of Hamilton High School. He had recently gone through an amicable divorce and moved into his parents’ West Hills home to save money. He talked about moving to Seattle to live with his mother and obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business, Caryl Kleker said.