Police Sort Events in Boy’s Shooting Death

A modest shrine with a flickering candle appeared Wednesday in the yard where Diego Martinez Rios, 9, was shot in the head and killed in what police still haven’t determined was a homicide or an accident.

A day after the fourth-grader’s death, Rios’ friends and relatives walked around dazed in the yard in the 300 block of South Bush Street, angry and shocked that the boy’s life was over.

His father, Guillermo Rios, said he blames both the 15-year-old suspect who remained in police custody Wednesday and the suspect’s older brother, who apparently owned the gun used in the shooting, for Diego’s death.

“It is difficult to understand this, but I do think the young man and his brother are responsible; one for shooting the gun and the other for leaving it laying around,” the father said.

Meanwhile, authorities were trying to figure out exactly what happened.

“There is nothing to lead us to believe that they argued before the shooting,” Police Sgt. Steve Rodig said. Police expect to finish reports of the incident today and forward them to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

After the shooting at 5:25 p.m. Tuesday, the suspect fled, but that night his mother turned the teen-ager in at police headquarters, where detectives interviewed him before booking him at Orange County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murder, according to Lt. John Cross.

Investigators said Wednesday that they had recovered the handgun used in the shooting, which they said belongs to the suspect’s older brother.

Through tears, Isabel Alvarado, one of Rios’ aunts, recounted the youth’s last minutes, saying he had just finished dinner Tuesday in the apartment he shares with his parents, three sisters and two brothers, before sprinting out the door.

Five minutes later, shouts were heard outside about a little boy getting shot in a neighbor’s front yard. The single shot was apparently fired from a bedroom inside the house. Family members rushed around the corner to the house and saw Rios lying face up in the grass.

Rios “was not into violence, he’s not one of those types of boys,” said neighbor Patricia Ulloa.

“I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.

Abraham Rios, 15, the slain boy’s brother, said he saw the shooting suspect about an hour before the incident, walking around the neighborhood with a gun tucked into his pants.

While Rios claims the suspect was old enough to have “known what he was doing,” some neighbors felt the shooting was an accident involving no malice.

“It was an accident between two young boys,” said Marconi Marroquin, a roommate of the suspect. He said the older brother tried to hide the gun, but the teen-ager found it.

“How can you hide a pistol from a 15-year-old?” Marroquin asked.

As police sorted through the details of the case, Rios’ family on Wednesday tenderly placed the small shrine under the window where the boy died. A white candle flickered on an overturned bucket, which propped up a small picture of a religious icon, Senora de Guadalupe.