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6 People Shot While Attending Memorial Service : Violence: Five are treated and released; one remains hospitalized. Police seek a suspect believed involved in last week’s killings.

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

In an incident that police believe may have been gang or drug-related, six mourners were shot outside a Long Beach mortuary where services were under way for two victims of an attack last week.

After the Wednesday shooting, three families of victims of the first attack asked for police protection as they bury their children. A rosary was canceled Thursday for one victim out of fear of further violence. A funeral for another was abruptly moved to a secret location.

Of the six people injured Wednesday, one remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the chest, arm and hip. Juan Salvadore Segura, 19, was listed in stable condition Thursday.

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The others, including Michael Acosta, Kimberly Arnote and Ruben Perez, all 24, Guadalupe Gonzalez, 39, and Juanita Barrios, 26, who was 16 weeks pregnant, were treated at hospitals and released Wednesday night.

Police are seeking a possible suspect in last Thursday’s shooting deaths of four people, two of whom were being mourned when the drive-by shooting occurred. But mourners had only a vague description of the five men who fired into the crowd standing outside Spongberg Mortuary on Wednesday.

“It’s hard to understand,” Detective Roy Hamand said of the second attack on members of the same family. “This isn’t retaliation--it’s . . . an escalation of what happened last Thursday.”

The shock of this week’s shootings made the victims’ families afraid to go out in public, even to mourn their dead.

Fear drove the family of shooting victim Ronnie Henry Jr. to move services to a secret location.

The double funeral for Roy Anthony Casillas, 25, and his pregnant girlfriend, Veronica Gonzalez, 17--two of the four victims of the first shooting--is scheduled for today.

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But Casillas’ mother said: “I don’t even know if we’re going to go. I don’t know what we’re doing.”

To the assailants, Carmen Casillas said: “Enough, please leave us in peace, and let God judge.”

The violence that claimed four lives and left six injured just before midnight last Thursday, began when four men wearing blue bandannas over their faces walked into a North Long Beach back yard through an alley gate.

In the back yard, Roy Casillas, Gonzalez, an unidentified 49-year-old man and 19-year-old Ronnie Henry Jr. were playing pool. Police believe that a pair of assailants stayed in the back yard while others went into the house, where Casillas’ brother, 23-year-old Kirk Robert Casillas, and his 22-year-old girlfriend were watching television.

The gunmen told the young woman to look away and then shot Kirk Casillas in the head, police said. He remains in critical condition at an unnamed hospital. All four people in the back yard also were shot in the head, and all died within 24 hours of the incident.

Shortly after both sons were shot, Carmen Casillas called for peace, asking friends and family of the victims not to retaliate. Police believe that the victims’ friends honored her request.

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But as mourners were leaving the mortuary Wednesday, after viewing the bodies of Gonzales and Roy Casillas, five assailants fired into the crowd of about 60 people. Some of the gunmen were in a car and others were on foot, Hamand said. “It was a typical gang shooting into a crowd,” Hamand said. “They don’t apparently care who they shoot or kill.”

Carmen Casillas said Thursday: “We’re asking again, stop the violence.”

Although police initially said the shootings last Thursday appeared to be drug related, Hamand said he could not rule out other motives. At least one victim had a gang affiliation, Hamand said, and family members said another victim kept large amounts of money in the house on East 68th Street.

The Casillas family repeatedly denied that either brother was involved with drugs.

“They were both good,” said Carmen Casillas, who lived just across the back alley from her sons. “The newspapers were saying that they were somehow involved in drugs, but they weren’t.”

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Times staff writer Roxana Kopetman contributed to this story.

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