Vigil of Grief : Huntington Park Woman Sits Silently on the Porch Where Boyfriend Died After Being Shot Defending Her From Thief

Siria Villagran sat Tuesday clutching a red rose on the same Huntington Park porch where her boyfriend died, shot in the chest trying to defend her from a thief a few feet from her home.

It was there that she pressed her lips against his Sunday night and ordered him to breathe. It was there that she opened his black and beige shirt and found the small bullet wound in his chest. And it was there that his body stiffened and she suddenly realized that the unthinkable had happened--that 24-year-old Oscar Beltran was dead.

Since Beltran’s death, Villagran has continued to sit on the porch, where she, family and friends have lit seven candles and set out a glass of water in case his spirit is thirsty. It comforts her to be there, she says. She believes she can feel Beltran’s protective warmth. She believes he won’t abandon her, a petite, 5-foot-3 Guatemalan immigrant who sews trousers in a factory for $4.50 an hour.

“He was the only one who made me happy,” Villagran said, crying noiselessly. “He can’t leave me. He’s the only one who knows me. There’s no way he’s going to leave me alone here.”

Beltran, an unemployed truck driver from Los Angeles, had dropped by his girlfriend’s home Sunday as he did every day. Usually, he would knock with his keys on the sliding glass door and they would go to a restaurant to get takeout food to eat at her home, a sparsely furnished garage converted into an apartment. But on this evening, Beltran didn’t knock. Instead, he peered in through the window, seeing Villagran as she hung red and white floral curtains.

The young couple watched television, and they had a spat--a result, she said, of Beltran’s protective jealousy. Just before 8 p.m., having patched up their differences, Villagran walked Beltran to his burgundy Mustang, parked on the quiet, tree-lined street outside.

As she stood in the street and he sat down behind the wheel, a young man walked up to Villagran. Holding a gun, the man demanded cash, but Villagran had left her apartment empty-handed.

Beltran--a small, compact man, only slightly larger than Villagran--jumped from his car as the robber pushed his girlfriend aside. “Give him money,” Villagran told Beltran.

Before Beltran could comply, the gunman pulled the trigger and fled. Beltran stumbled to the porch of the house in front of Villagran’s home.

“Don’t worry,” he told her before he collapsed.

Villagran tried to breathe life into her boyfriend of almost four years. For several seconds it seemed like he was responding, she said. His eyes were open, his body was moving. But then his arm fell to his side. Villagran later realized that the twitches were the prelude to Beltran’s death.

Only 24 hours later, Huntington Park police arrested Juan Jose Angulo and charged him with Beltran’s murder. Angulo, 22, was caught behind the wheel of a stolen car--a 1988 Ford Taurus that had been taken from its owner in a carjacking last week in nearby Cudahy, police said.

Angulo, who is being held without bail, has been linked to carjackings and robberies in Huntington Park and Southgate, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said. He was arrested only blocks from Villagran’s home.

It brings Villagran no comfort that the man believed to have killed Beltran is behind bars. Instead, she seeks consolation on the porch of her neighbor’s house, right by the front door where Beltran collapsed.

She does not think of how she met Beltran that evening at the dance hall, where his favorite dance was the quebradita, a stylized Mexican dance step similar to country-Western dances. But she remembers how they instantly had understood one another. Beltran, who came here more than 10 years ago from Sinaloa, a rural state in western Mexico, helped her learn her way in this new world. With him, her bare apartment seemed almost cozy.

Now, she simply likes to sit on her neighbor’s porch, keeping a silent vigil for the man she affectionately called “baby.”

“There is no way he is going to leave me alone here,” Villagran said. “Oscar is going to come for me. I have faith.”