Man Killed, 3 Wounded by Santa Ana Gang Fire : Violence: The victims were surrounded after playing basketball at high school, shot by at least three guns.

A man was shot to death and three others were wounded by a pack of gang members who riddled the victims’ van with gunfire as they tried to flee Santa Ana High School following a pickup game of basketball, police said Thursday.

“There is absolutely nothing to indicate the victims were gang members,” Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton said. “They were just there playing basketball.”

The victims, three brothers and a teen-ager, were among nine friends playing a pickup game about 8 p.m. Wednesday when as many as 15 gang members in the bleachers harassed them off the court, Helton said.

Fatally wounded was Mauro Meza, a 31-year-old nursery driver and father of three, who was shot in the mouth and head after the gang formed a human barrier at the school’s parking lot exit, then circled the van.

The brutality surprised even some veteran police officers.

“They started banging on the van, messing with mirrors and (Meza) says to one guy, ‘Hey, why are you messing with us?’ And that’s when the one guy put a gun in his mouth and the rest of them went crazy,” said a police officer with knowledge of the case who asked not to be identified. “They just opened fire on (the van).”

Passengers who survived the attack said Meza was shot at close range by two attackers, one at the driver’s window, the other at the left corner of the windshield.

“This was just totally senseless,” the officer added. “This was not gang against gang. These were innocents, and to just go over and blow them away for nothing. . . .”

The incident was the most serious in an escalation of violence around the high school that has prompted the closing of an adjacent street to discourage drive-by shootings. The school is just a few blocks from the Civic Center.

“The cop assigned to that campus . . . came in a few months back and said, ‘We’ve got a real problem, and it’s not on campus but for the kids walking home from school,’ ” recounted Sgt. Don Blankenship, president of the Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn.

“But what are you going to do? You can’t escort each and every student home.”

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters vowed to capture the attackers. “We’ll identify them, apprehend them and, whether they had firearms or not, convict them and send them to prison,” he said.

Walters said the county police chiefs association is considering a countywide gang task force to address the problem regionally and “help alleviate the fears in the community so everyone realizes what we are doing as a county.”

A spokeswoman for the Santa Ana Unified School District called the shootings “tragic,” especially since the campus is used as a recreational retreat by overcrowded families.

“It’s really sad when you think about it that people can’t go and do recreational activities at a school and you have to be concerned about violence,” said Audrey Yamagata-Noji, a district board member. “To think that with Daylight Saving Time, there could have been little kids around.”

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young and Councilman Robert L. Richardson, whose ward the shooting occurred in, could not be reached for comment Thursday night.

Maria Guadalupe Meza, the wife of the dead man, could hardly speak through sobs Thursday afternoon at the house she and her husband shared with 16 people.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “Oh, my God! My beautiful Mauro. Oh, Mauro!

“These gangs . . . why? They were playing basketball. Why did they . . . “ Her voice trailed off. “Why didn’t he stay late at work?”

A telephone rang, and it was Meza’s parents in Puebla, Mexico. His widow, an uncle, his children and several other relatives assembled around the telephone inside the couple’s bedroom. As the parents were told of the shooting, there was a long pause by Abel Casalas, an uncle to Meza’s widow, who was on the telephone.

“They’re crying. I can hear them crying,” he told those assembled.

As he did so many other weeknights, Mauro Meza returned home from a day of transporting plants for a nursery in Orange and was persuaded by his brothers to shoot some hoops at the high school.

“Even if he was tired from work, as he was last night, he would take his brothers, and sometimes his wife and his children--the whole family really--put them into the van down to the courts,” Casalas said.

Although he was only 5 feet 9, Meza loved playing basketball and watching his beloved Lakers on television. He grew up in the Mexican state of Puebla, south of Mexico City, and worked on a farm growing corn there before immigrating to the United States 11 years ago because of the economic crisis in Mexico.

He and his wife have twin daughters, Eva and Adelita, 9, and a son, Mauro Jr., 18 months old.

Survivors of Wednesday’s attack said the group played a full-court game as the group of toughs, who appeared to be 16 to 18 years old, sat in the bleachers drinking beer and hollering taunts.

“I had never seen them before,” said Augustin Bibar, 43, one of the players. “Oh, we see people like that, but we didn’t know who they were.”

No one saw any guns, he said, but they decided to leave as the sun faded and they grew nervous.

As the Meza brothers and their friends tried to drive away from the school parking lot, the attackers stood drinking beers and smoking cigarettes as they blocked the driveway. Then, some of them circled in closer to the van.

The confrontation was brief, survivors said. One youth pushed down Meza’s side mirror and another challenged him to step outside the van and talk, which Meza did not. A third gang member asked him for a smoke.

In Spanish, Meza said, “Why are you asking me for a cigarette?” Then, two of the gang members quickly drew guns on him.

“They just opened fire on Mauro. Both of them, from two sides,” Bibar said.

A rain of bullets came. One police officer, who asked not to be identified, said 15 to 20 shots were fired from at least three guns. “Two guns for sure and a rifle,” he said.

A brother, who had not been hit, drove the van several blocks, but Mauro Meza collapsed and died before they could reach home.

Another brother, Benito Meza, 20, was airlifted to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo with a chest wound. He was listed in stable condition. Winulfo Meza, 24, was taken to UCI Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the head and was listed as critical.

A 16-year-old friend, whose name was not released because of his age, was shot in the right hand and treated at Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana.

The most recent shooting around the campus was last Sept. 11, when a special education teacher was caught in the middle of a gun battle in broad daylight as she left the school. She was not hit, but a bullet lodged in her daughter’s car seat.

Following a drive-by shooting near the campus two weeks later, police responded swiftly to the Santa Ana Unified School District’s requests for help by shutting down Ross Street on school days.

Ironically, said one police sergeant who asked not to be named, an officer had issued a bulletin the day before the shooting, saying there appeared to be a rumble brewing between two gangs claiming the high school as their turf.

“Remember, these guys are subhuman,” the sergeant said. “They don’t care about the backdrop where they’re shooting, that there could have been kids on the court. They don’t care.”

One of her uncles tried to explain to Eva Meza how her father died, and she retold the story in disturbing detail.

“They drove up to these gangsters drinking beer,” she explained. “They told my father, ‘Bye.’ Because he was already dead,” she said. “My mother cried and she went to the van to see him. There was so much blood.”

Santa Ana Shooting

Three brothers and another youth were shot--one fatally--after playing a pickup basketball game at Santa Ana High Shool on Wednesday. Times staff writers Thuan Le, Eric Young and Catherine Gewertz contributed to this report.