Fullerton Teen Fatally Shot After School : Slaying: Police say groups of Asians and Latinos traded racial slurs at noontime. A carload of youths are sought in the killing.

A 15-year-old student was shot to death less than a block from Fullerton Union High School Friday, moments after school let out, apparently after a confrontation between two groups of teen-agers.

Police said Angel Gonzalez was shot at 3:05 p.m. in the 300 block of N. Pomona Ave., where a group of youths had chased him. Police said the youths then fled in a 1980 blue Chevrolet Camaro, and remained at large Friday night.

The shooting was the third such attack outside a high school in Orange County since the school year began last week. On Sept. 11, two teen-agers were seriously wounded outside Loara High School in Anaheim in what police said was a gang shooting. And two days before that, a police officer trying to break up a fight between two groups of teens a block from Santa Ana High School shot and killed a student who reportedly pointed a gun at him.

Police said Friday’s slaying most likely was triggered by a noontime shouting match between two groups of youths at a McDonald’s restaurant, about half a block from the shooting scene.

Witnesses said that shortly before 3 p.m., Gonzalez and a group of Latino teen-agers were walking south on Pomona Avenue when four to six Asians youths confronted them and reportedly yelled racial slurs. The second group had been standing near the scene for about an hour and appeared to be waiting for someone, said one witness who declined to be identified.

“It was really strange,” the witness said.

“We usually don’t have Asian kids around here, mostly Mexicans and whites. But they were walking back and forth on the sidewalk and up and down the alley. Then I heard them yelling at each other. The Asians were yelling racial slurs at the Mexican kids.”

The witness said she saw the fight between the groups begin and then went inside her business.

“Ten minutes later, (a co-worker) ran inside and yelled, ‘They’re shooting!’ ” she said.

Mike Fillmore, a 17-year-old Fullerton High student, said that moments after the gunfire, he and others found Gonzalez sprawled on the front lawn of a dental office.

“We flipped him over to treat him with first aid,” said Fillmore who did not witness the shooting. “His face was all bloody and he had a wound in his back. I thought we could stop the bleeding. We put a blanket on him, and he coughed a couple of times. I knew he was gone.”

“It’s a tragedy, truly a tragedy,” Fullerton Union Principal Ed Shaw said “The students who knew Angel are taking this pretty hard. This is the first situation like this I’ve heard of here.”

Shaw said a “crisis team” would be on campus Monday to help students deal with Gonzalez’s death.

The shooting occurred across the street from Children’s House Child Development Center, a YWCA day-care facility, where nine toddlers, ages 3 and under, were playing in the front yard. Officials there said that when they heard the gunshots, they pulled the children inside. No one was injured.

“There’s a lot of kids always out front, and very frequently there’s a lot of fights that we have to call police. But this is the first serious altercation in a long time,” said Janet Brown of the YWCA North Orange County. “It’s scary for us.”

Police Friday night continued to search for Gonzalez’s killer. The car, license plate 1DEH513, had not been found.

Among the crowd that gathered around the scene was Gonzalez’s former Pop Warner football coach, Ernie Sambrano, 33, of Fullerton, who said he rushed there after hearing about the shooting on a police scanner. Sambrano said he was worried about his daughter, also a student at Fullerton Union High.

“He was just a kid,” Sambrano said, tears welling. “He used to be the neighborhood disc jockey for parties. He wasn’t a bully. Everybody loved him.”

At the Gonzalez home in Fullerton, the victim’s mother, Marie (Cookie) Gonzalez, sat crying on the living-room couch.

“The end of my world is here,” she said.

Dozens of relatives and friends streamed through the house, just a quarter of a mile from the shooting scene. In the kitchen, Angel’s father, Ernie, discussed plans for the funeral, while Angel’s sisters answered endless telephone calls from friends and neighbors.

“Everybody loved him,” Cookie Gonzalez said. “People from everywhere knew Angel. I don’t even know half these people.”

Of her six children, Angel caused the least trouble, she said.

“I had no problems with Angel; everything I would ask Angel he would do,” she said. “I love them all, but there’s something about Angel. He was like a teddy bear, something I could hold onto.”

Angel loved sports and played shortstop this summer on a local baseball team, family members said. He set up a stereo system in the garage and often played disc jockey at friends’ parties, and he drew pictures of birds and cars whenever he was bored.

“I like music, cars, money, dogs,” Angel wrote several weeks ago on a scrap piece of notebook paper. “I enjoy sports, movies . . . partying.”

Gonzalez’s friends and sisters said Angel avoided fights, and was not in a gang.

“He never ran (in) the streets,” said 23-year-old sister Inez Perez. “He said he was going to be different than anybody else.”

Added 18-year-old sister Connie Gonzalez: “He wanted to be different. He wanted to prove himself. He wanted to make Mama proud.”

Times staff writer Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.