2 Men Killed, 2 Wounded in Shootings : Crime: Police suspect gang members were the assailants in the unrelated incidents, one early Saturday morning, the other late Friday night.

A 19-year-old college student was killed and two of his friends were injured in a Christmas Eve shooting in a residential neighborhood, police said. A separate shooting in front of a convenience store late Friday left another young man dead.

Rene Fernandez, 19, was gunned down shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday by unknown assailants who chased him and his friends in a car and on foot, police said. Santa Ana Sgt. Ken Ice said Fernandez and his friends were shot at as they drove to a home in the 1700 block of Carlton Place and that one of the assailants followed them, firing a semiautomatic handgun, as they pulled into a driveway and tried to run inside the house.

Police said they believe the suspects are gang members, but the victim was not.

Family members spent Christmas Eve making funeral plans and grieving at their Santa Ana home, said the victim’s father, Victor Fernandez.

“We are a big family. We were planning to stay here in my house with my family. Now what’s going to happen? Nothing,” Victor Fernandez sighed. “Everybody’s here crying. Nobody can believe it. We are devastated.”

Rene Fernandez was hit in the upper torso and died at the scene, Ice said. His friend Robert Molina, 19, was wounded in the arm, while Jose Martinez, 18, was shot in the chest. Both were treated at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana and released.

In an unrelated shooting, 20-year-old Alejandro Montes of Garden Grove was shot several times in the chest shortly before 11 p.m. Friday night as he sat in a car parked outside a convenience store at 3312 W. 1st St. Montes was pronounced dead at the scene.

Witnesses told police they heard several shots at about 10:40 p.m., but no assailants were seen, Ice said. The driver of the car Montes was sitting in was inside the store at the time, he added.

Police suspect gang members were also involved in the Montes slaying.

No one was arrested in either incident, and both are being investigated by detectives in the city’s gang unit, Ice said.

Born in Santa Ana, Rene Fernandez was the oldest of four children. He graduated from Valley High School in 1993 and was attending classes at Orange Coast College while working part time at South Coast Plaza, family members said.

Victor Fernandez said his son has never before been in trouble and did not belong to a gang.

“He was not a perfect boy, but he was 90% good, no trouble at all,” Victor Fernandez said. “He was for everybody . . . but sometimes nobody was for him.”

Victor Fernandez said he and his wife saw Rene late Friday night and knew he was going back out with some friends at about 1 a.m. They were sleeping when a friend came running into their home about 2:30 a.m. screaming that Rene had been shot.

“I was sleeping in my home,” Victor Fernandez said. “A friend of Rene’s came to tell me that Rene was lying somewhere, but I never thought . . . “

“This is like a brutal assassination,” he added. “There’s no motive for the shooting. It’s like a coldblooded murder. These guys, they don’t know him, he doesn’t know them. This guy, he doesn’t have no soul. . . . Maybe God can help him and change his life.”