Downtown L.A. Shoppers Put Watchfulness High on List

With one arm wrapped around her little boy, Patricia Flores was not taking any chances Saturday as she flipped through a row of compact discs at a store in the busy Broadway shopping district downtown.

“I’m taking extra care because it’s really strange what happened to those two boys,” said Flores, 17, holding tightly to 3-year-old Mariano, who was decked out for a day of shopping in his cowboy boots, black jeans and freshly pressed white shirt. “When you come down here, you don’t know what can happen.”

Broadway is Southern California’s major Latino shopping area, and on Saturday it seemed that just about everybody was talking about the strange tale of a day laborer who said he had found two missing boys in the downtown area in the last month.

“For all I know, that guy could be going around looking for little kids,” said Francisco Guillen, who was visiting from Escondido with his three children and two nieces, ages 3 to 8. While his wife and sister strolled through the Grand Central Marketplace, Guillen stood guard as the children played outside. “You can’t take your eyes away for one minute--because the next thing you know, they’re gone.”

Police, meanwhile, said Saturday that there were no new leads in the investigation of Enrique Palma Lopez. The 31-year-old day laborer was hailed as a hero after he said he found 4-year-old Matthew Vera wandering along Pico Boulevard in early December. Matthew had vanished 40 hours earlier from the downtown Greyhound bus station.

Lopez resurfaced again Monday, when he called authorities saying that he had found 3-year-old Andrew Rodriguez, who disappeared Christmas Day from a Broadway video arcade.

Investigators, who said they were skeptical that the two cases were mere coincidence, questioned Lopez for 10 hours last week but released him because there was not enough evidence to file charges.

Also last week, police confirmed that Lopez was arrested in 1987 on suspicion of lewd behavior with a child under 14. He was never charged.

Amid the festive atmosphere on Broadway--where the rhythmic sounds of salsa and cumbia blared from discotecas and shoppers perused displays featuring everything from gold chains to exotic chilies--the thought of a potential kidnaper roaming the streets weighed heavily on parents’ minds.

“Me and my wife play tag team--she shops, and I watch the children,” said Jose Prieto of Downey as he hovered over his 5-year-old twins, Robert and Roger. The family was inside a jewelry store.

Skateboards in hand, the two boys wanted to go outside and play, but Prieto would have none of that. “You’re staying by me,” he said.

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