Charges Sought in Deaths From Monoxide : Poisoning: Couple living in converted garage were killed by fumes from heater.

A young South-Central Los Angeles couple who had lived together for eight days died in their sleep as fumes from an unvented water heater filled their tiny, illegally converted apartment, authorities said Friday.

Maria de Jesus Gonzales, 16, and Juan Pimentel, 22, suffocated last week after breathing carbon monoxide from an unvented water heater in their 8-by-15-foot one-room apartment in the 1200 block of East 78th Street, Sheriff’s Detective Jerome Beck said.

Beck said he will ask the district attorney’s office to file involuntary manslaughter charges against building owner Humberto Casillas, 59, of El Monte.

Building and safety investigators said they found numerous code violations in the apartment--a carport that was illegally converted into a one-room unit and rented for $300 a month.

The bodies were found Feb. 2 when Gonzales’ 14-year-old brother, Juan, asked the building manager to open the door to their apartment when they did not answer.

“I saw them lying on the floor,” Juan Gonzales said Friday. “I touched my sister. She was frozen. She was cold.”

It is illegal to have a water heater in a room used for sleeping, said Billy Nelson, a county building and safety investigator who inspected the building this week. With the doors and windows closed, fumes from the unvented heater are trapped in the room.

Gonzales’ brothers recalled that their sister, a junior at Jordan High School, had told them she was pregnant.

She and her boyfriend were happy and all they wanted was to get their own place and get their life together started, the brothers said.

Maria’s older brother, Alfred, 26, said she was planning to ask their father next weekend for his permission to get married.

“But that weekend never came,” he said.

Her mother, Maria Alberta Gonzales, pointed to her daughter’s photos that covered the living room walls: one from her quinceanera, others from school, a recent photo with her boyfriend.

“My baby . . . she is gone,” the mother said quietly in Spanish, over and over again. “We buried her yesterday.”

Alfred Gonzales said that although the family has not yet decided to file a lawsuit against the building owner, he insisted that the landlord should stop renting out “that deathtrap.”

“I would hate to hear about someone else dying in this way,” he said.

But two doors from where Gonzales and Pimentel died, Delia Gutierrez and her 2-year-old son live in an identical one-room apartment.

She said she has been told by the landlord and sheriff’s deputies that she has to move, although they have not said when.

“They told me it’s dangerous,” said Gutierrez, 22. She said she fears for what might happen to her and her baby, but on a $307 monthly welfare check and food stamps, she cannot afford much more than this $300 room. “I don’t know where to go.”

Nelson said tenants have to move out if it is determined that the apartments are illegal conversions. The inspector said the owner has agreed to comply with the law and make necessary improvements.

County health inspectors said they also found that the apartments suffered from cockroach infestation.

Records show that Casillas owns one other apartment building in Los Angeles. He could not be reached for comment.