Home of Drywall Foreman Is Hit by Bullets, Firebomb : Violence: No link to strikers is found. The supervisor was reportedly threatened recently at a job site.

The home of a drywall foreman was hit by gunfire and a Molotov cocktail Tuesday, several days after he had been threatened at a Tustin construction site by striking Orange County drywall workers.

Rufino Espinoza, 30, a foreman for San Dimas-based, Gateway Drywall Co., told Orange County sheriff’s deputies that bullets crashed through a sliding glass door of his Anaheim home about 1 a.m. and landed within five feet of his sleeping children. The burning Molotov cocktail damaged the front porch.

“We were awakened by gunfire, and then I heard this loud noise in front of my house,” said Espinoza, visibly shaken. “When I came outside, there were flames near my front door. I used a hose to put the fire out.”

A rear window of one of Espinoza’s vehicles was shot out, and a front tire of a pickup parked in his driveway was flattened by gunfire.

Sheriff’s deputies said nine shell casings were found at the scene, in the 9800 block of Chanticleer Road. Three bullets hit the front of the house, and one went through the sliding glass door into a bedroom. At least four bullets struck three parked vehicles.

Lt. Dick Olson, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, said investigators have found no evidence “to confirm that this was done by striking drywallers.”

But construction industry spokesmen said the gunfire and fire represent the worst violence yet in the 2 1/2-month-old strike by drywall workers.

Robert Nastase, a spokesman for the Building Industry Assn., condemned what he called the “continued lawlessness” of the striking drywall workers to help publicize their plight.

“It’s like they’re not satisfied that they’re not getting enough press. This is like the L.A. riots where they do violence and it takes more and more violence to get media coverage,” Nastase said.

Roy Navarro, a spokesman for the striking drywall workers who meet at a carpenters union hall in Orange, said none of the workers he knows who are involved in the strike carry weapons.

“This is the first I have heard of it. We don’t carry weapons for anything. No. None of us carry weapons around here. We want this to be a labor movement, peaceful. Not something violent,” Navarro said.

Espinoza said he had received verbal threats while working at sites in Tustin and Corona recently. As foreman, it’s part of his job to drive independent drywall workers to construction sites, he said. In Tustin, several dozen strikers had surrounded the site and threatened to hurt him if he didn’t join the strike, he said.

Tuesday’s attack occurred in the 10th week of the strike by about 1,000 non-union drywall workers--most of them Latino immigrants--in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties.

The drywallers, who complain that their pay averages as little as $300 a week and that they haven’t had a raise in 10 years, are asking for better wages and for contractors to negotiate union contracts with them.

On July 2, more than 150 drywall workers were arrested by Orange County sheriff’s deputies at a construction site in Mission Viejo. Authorities said the men had trespassed and had forced six non-striking workers to leave the site.

Charges against 68 of those arrested were subsequently dropped. Forty-eight men pleaded guilty to charges of disturbing the peace, and 11 pleaded guilty to other charges, including battery and assault. Charges against the others are pending.

About two weeks ago, strikers blocked the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles after a skirmish with police.

Just last week, one man was arrested by the California Highway Patrol after a confrontation erupted between striking workers who pulled beside a truck headed east on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim that was filled with 30 workers from the Gateway Drywall Co. Espinoza told sheriff’s deputies that some Gateway workers involved in the altercation were part of his crew.

Espinoza said he has been employed with Gateway for 14 years and a foreman for the last three years.

Miguel Caballero, legal director for the California Immigrant Workers Assn. (CIWA) in Los Angeles, an organization which helped monitor the criminal cases against the striking drywall workers, condemned the violence.

“My reaction is of course, shock. I’m not aware of any of the workers being involved in violence like this. We at CIWA do not condone any of the violent activities like this. We abhor it as much as the construction industry people do,” Caballero said.