Friends, Family Question Slaying of Youth by Deputies

All day long, Joe Sanchez’s family and friends drifted over to the trash-strewn alley from their homes nearby to reminisce and try to comprehend the fate of the 15-year-old felled Monday by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy’s bullet.

Maribel Gordillo, 17, sister of the slain teen-ager, entered the alley with tears in her eyes.

“I never had a chance to say goodby, my mother never had a chance to say goodby,” she said. “He was breathing when they took him away, but they wouldn’t let us near him; they wouldn’t even let my mother and me ride in the ambulance. I wish I could have told him something.”

Sheriff’s Department officials said Sanchez was shot and killed about 6:45 p.m. Monday after four deputies heard gunshots and came upon a group of teen-agers firing weapons in the alley west of New Hampshire in the Athens area.

Sanchez was mortally wounded, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Diane Hecht, moments after the deputies “saw five to six Hispanics shooting weapons in the alley and ordered them to drop their weapons. But they did not comply and instead of dropping their weapons, they began shooting at the deputies. The deputies returned fire, striking two of the males.”

No deputies were injured in the shooting. One .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun was recovered.

Sanchez and a 15-year-old who was not identified were hit in the upper body, deputies said. Sanchez died shortly after arrival at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The other teen-ager was taken to Harbor UCLA Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition, Hecht said.

As they questioned the sheriff’s version of the shooting, some of Sanchez’s relatives and friends counted the bullet holes in a wooden fence not far from where the teen-ager fell. Someone scrawled a message, “R.I.P. to ‘Boola,’ ” the name that friends called Sanchez.

One friend, claiming he was in the alley when the shooting erupted, said he saw Sanchez with the group testing a pistol. He said Sanchez was not armed.

“He was just sitting on the fence; he wasn’t doing anything,” said one 15-year-old. “They were just out there testing a gun; they weren’t shooting at anyone.”

Sanchez’s friends want to do something special in his memory. “He was our homie,” said one teen-ager. “We’re going to make a mural to honor . . . his life.”