Man’s Murder Rallies Apartment Owners to Demand Safer Streets : Violence: They say Blythe Street is a virtual prison for nearly 4,000 residents--and gang members are the wardens.

Donald Aragon was one of the good guys on Blythe Street, an apartment owner who kept his property clean and repaired while standing up to the ever-present gang members who openly sell drugs along the strip of mostly rundown post-war buildings.

He had spent much of Halloween making minor repairs to three newly rented units when he became the Blythe Street Dukes’ latest victim and was killed in a firefight that began with a failed carjacking at gunpoint, police said.

Aragon, who like several other owners on the graffiti-stained block west of Van Nuys Boulevard in Panorama City packed a gun when he visited his property, fired back and hit two gang members, one of whom was struck in the head and remained on life-support systems Monday.

“He was a good man, a fine man and all the other owners liked him,” said Bill Brower, another owner on the street, of Aragon. “He cared about what was right and wrong.”

Los Angeles Police Detective John Edwards said Aragon’s efforts to improve the street and the police reports he filed after gang members vandalized his building at 14626 Blythe last month did not lead to his death. Instead, Edwards said, the eight to 12 gang members who surrounded Aragon and his brother, Emanuel, wanted to steal his truck and the shotgun he kept with him so they could drive to Hollywood Boulevard for an open-air Halloween party.

“Basically, it was a carjacking that didn’t go the way they thought it would,” Edwards said. “It was an error in judgment.”

Instead of handing over the shotgun, Aragon reached under his seat for a .38-caliber revolver. It is unclear who fired first, family members said. Aragon, 55, died at the scene.

Edwards said the gang members who were shot were a 19-year-old immigrant from Mexico, who late Monday remained in critical condition at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, and a 17-year-old who was to be moved to the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center after surgery. Police declined to identify the two.

Police said both were believed to have fired guns in the shootout and plans are being made to arrest nine other gang members who were at the scene.

Other owners of buildings in the troubled block say Aragon’s death ought to make clear that extraordinary measures are necessary to ensure the safety of the 4,000 mostly poor people who live in a virtual prison on the street--with gang members as wardens.

“We’ve got to get really serious with our Police Department . . . and if they can’t take care of the job, I think we ought to ask federal troops to come in and be stationed here . . . to help us clean up our streets,” said Chuck Ferbrache, a Blythe Street building owner.

Several property owners said Monday that they want to meet with police and Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents the area, to press for a police crackdown.

Aragon’s widow, Betty, joined the call for a police crackdown.

“The innocent, law-abiding, tax-paying people are the ones who are victimized,” she said. “We are really very mad and disappointed about the Police Department.”

Van Nuys Division Police Capt. John Moran promised a “real aggressive” effort on the street in the wake of the killing. But, he said, he does not have enough personnel to station officers there around-the-clock permanently.

Moran said crime statistics for the street do not warrant that extraordinary response although police have said in the past that as much as 90% of the crime on the street goes unreported because residents are intimidated.

He said a foot patrol that works there in the evenings will remain, although officers are pulled off the street in response to emergencies in the area.

Moran added that the department will continue participating in a city-organized Blythe Street “community impact team” that includes property owners and representatives from various city departments that deal with housing, building code violations, recreation and other issues.

David Mays, Bernardi’s chief deputy, said those efforts will bear fruit but that police presence on the street must be increased until they do.

“We will insist that the Police Department find resources to make this street safe,” said Mays, who is setting up a meeting this week among police, owners and the councilman.

Apartment owners have been working for at least two years to try to assist such efforts. They organized an owners group and attempted to develop a database to keep track of problem tenants.

Aragon, who lived in Northridge, was particularly interested in the database and active in the owners’ organization. But he and other building owners decried the apparent disinterest of those who owned some of the street’s most troubled buildings.

“If we keep doing only what we are doing as individuals to fight gangs and drug dealers it’s a hopeless case,” Aragon said in an interview this year.

Aragon bought the 18-unit building in 1982 and had watched as the gang grew more brazen and began confronting anyone who drove down the street. Several years ago Aragon, a supervisor at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in North Hills, began toting a shotgun on trips to his building.

Last year, gang members angered because he had reported their activities to police surrounded his truck, denting fenders and breaking glass. They ran when he confronted them with the gun.

He painted over graffiti virtually every day after work and installed security lights. But those lights were repeatedly shot out.

Aragon also wrote down the license plate numbers of dealers and buyers and reported them to police. Even so, the gang had recently made the front of his building their hangout.

Brower said Aragon’s death represents an escalation in the street conflict. Until recently the weapons in most confrontations were words and rocks.

Now, he said, all 100 or so gang members who do business on the street seem to be armed. “They literally control that street,” he said. “They can sell drugs, kill people, mug people, tell anyone they want they can’t live there. It’s gotten to the point now, it’s not a bunch of punks. You take your life into your own hands now just by going out there.”

Troubled Block The death of a building owner in Panorama City has brought additional calls for cleaning up the street.