Gunfire Strikes Drywall Foreman’s Home

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 and landed within five feet of his sleeping children about 1 a.m. 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.”

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

Construction industry spokesmen said the gunshots and fire represent the worst violence yet in the 2-month-old strike by drywall workers.

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

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 carry weapons.

“This is the first I have heard of it. . . . None of us carry weapons around here. We want this to be a labor movement, peaceful. Not something violent,” Navarro said.

Tuesday’s incident 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.

Advocates for the strikers appeared at a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting Tuesday alleging mistreatment and harassment by officers during and after a July 23 skirmish that spilled onto the Hollywood Freeway and resulted in the arrest of 68 drywall workers. Chief Willie L. Williams said he would meet with leaders of the California Immigrant Workers Assn. to hear their complaints.

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