Santa Ana Youth Slain on Way to School : Violence: Gunman opens fire on car carrying 3 students. Police arrest a 17-year-old gang member but don’t know whether Jose Luis Lopez was the intended victim.

In a seemingly endless escalation of violence around Southland campuses, a 17-year-old was shot to death Friday morning as he was driving to school with his brother and cousin, police said.

Jose Luis Lopez, a senior and varsity soccer player at Century High School, was shot once in the head just before 8 a.m. and died at the scene, less than two blocks from the school. Police later arrested a 17-year-old gang member on suspicion of the slaying.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Helton said Lopez was driving on Edinger Avenue, crossing the railroad tracks, when a youth standing near the tracks fired a gun through the driver’s-side window. After the single shot was fired, witnesses said, Lopez’s car veered off the road and slammed into a nearby pole.

Lopez’s brother Adrian, 17, and cousin, Rene Guillen, 16, both students at Century High, were not injured in the crash, Helton said.

“I feel terrible. I don’t want to live any more,” Jose’s mother, Isabel Lopez, screamed in Spanish as hundreds of friends and relatives gathered at the family’s Santa Ana home to mourn Friday afternoon. “This is a crazy life. They shot my beautiful son in the head. They shot him in the head. He was a good boy. Why? Why did they shoot him?”

Police do not know the motive for the shooting, but Lopez’s relatives said Friday that the suspect had threatened the family two days earlier. They speculated that the gunman may have been aiming for Guillen, who was shot in the leg last year.

Helton said police “don’t know if he was the intended target or if one of the other people was the target. We don’t know if this was an intentional crime committed against them or if it was just this car coming down the street and our suspect decided to shoot into it.”

He said a witness gave detectives the suspect’s nickname, and a computer network that chronicles information on gang members produced the suspect’s name. Detectives waited outside the suspect’s house and arrested him about 12:30 p.m., when he left in a van with his father, Helton said. Police have not found the murder weapon.

Lopez, who was described as a B student who loved sports and was not involved with gangs, is the fourth Southland student to die by gunfire in the past month. The attack is the eighth shooting near Orange County schools this academic year.

Two high school students have also been shot to death on campuses already this year in Los Angeles County. On Monday, a 17-year-old was slain at Reseda High School, and a 15-year-old classmate was arrested. On Jan. 21, a 16-year-old student was fatally shot in a classroom at Fairfax High School.

“It’s a tragedy. It appears to be a play-out of macho activity with no regard for human life,” county School Supt. John F. Dean said of the increasing violence. “We have mostly kids, high school age, who aren’t thinking of the consequences down the line . . . instead of throwing a fist they grab a gun.”

Since September, violence has erupted at or near schools in Anaheim, Lake Forest and Irvine as well as Santa Ana.

In Santa Ana, a 17-year-old was slain Jan. 21 outside Saddleback High School. In October, a 14-year-old was shot in the hand while walking home from school, and in September a police officer killed a 16-year-old boy while trying to break up a fight between two rival gangs a block from Santa Ana High.

Police officers are now stationed at each high school campus in Santa Ana, Chief Paul M. Walters said.

“But you can’t follow every kid to and from school,” Walters pointed out. “The only thing we can do really is provide a safe place when they’re at school. When they’re away from school it becomes increasingly difficult.”

At Century High on Friday, shocked students and staff met with the school district’s crisis team of psychologists. A dance scheduled Friday evening was canceled, as were many after-school activities, and plans were beginning for a memorial service and a memorial fund.

Students said that after the shooting, Adrian Lopez, a sophomore, burst onto campus riding a bicycle, wailing: “They killed my brother, they killed my brother.”

“We were in shock when we heard the news,” said Sindy Perez, a Century High sophomore. “It was a quiet campus.”

Lopez, the eldest of five children, was a Boy Scout and worked part time as a clerk at Stater Bros. supermarket in Santa Ana. He played football and starred as a center forward on the school’s soccer team, and was about to be named Most Valuable Player, students said.

He was the leading scorer when his team won the Celtic Cup in 1990 and scored at least five goals in as many weeks this year before his team was eliminated from the playoffs last week.

“He was a really friendly guy . . . he didn’t have a problem with anyone,” said Jaime Villa, 17, a junior who also plays on the soccer team. “I guess he was just really unlucky.”

Sergio Lopez, 30, cousin of the slain youth, said: “It’s hard to understand that he was involved in anything bad. I’m positive there was confusion.”

Seated in the living room of the family’s modest, single-story home, where family portraits and Jose’s soccer trophies are displayed, Jose’s father, Victor Lopez, lamented the violence that plagues the city.

“Why all the violence? All this violence has to stop. I don’t want them to kill all of my family,” said Lopez, 36, a construction worker who has been trying to find work since the new year. “It’s the way they live in this country. Somebody has to think of better ideas to stop this violence.”

Late Friday afternoon, family members brought hot cinnamon tea to mourners who huddled under tarps outside because they could not fit in the Lopez’s three-bedroom house. Friends and relatives disparaged the gang activity that led to the youth’s death as they comforted one another.

“The children here . . . the kids have problems in this country,” said Luis Lopez, another cousin, who recently emigrated from Michoacan state in Mexico. “Here they want to settle things with guns. Where I come from you settle it man to man, with your hands. Here they settle it with guns. That’s not very manly. It’s dishonorable.”

Times staff writer Stacy Wong contributed to this report. TODDLER DIES

Two-year-old dies one day after being hit in Santa Ana drive-by shooting. B4