Man Arrested for Shooting Youth Tampering With Car

A 20-year-old man who fatally shot an apparently unarmed teen-ager he found tampering with his car early Friday was arrested on suspicion of murder, police said.

Peter Garnica was being held in the death of the youth, who police believe was about 15 years old. A second youth who was with the victim ran away as the shooting started.

The volley of shots about 3 a.m. woke neighbors on Loosmore Street in Cypress Park, a quiet block of aging one-story stucco and wood homes.

“I didn’t see anything but I heard someone arguing,” Helena Jimenez said Friday afternoon as she stood in her front yard, braiding her 9-year-old daughter’s hair. “Then I heard two shots. Then I heard someone screaming--like when you’re hurt or something: ‘Oh, no! No! No! No!’ Then I heard five or six more shots. Then it was quiet.”

Jimenez waited several minutes before she opened her front door and looked about 50 feet east down her street to see a body lying on its side near a parked car.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Raul Vega said of the victim, “He was hit all over.”

Police and some neighbors believed Garnica is a member of a gang. “The Cypress Park gang,” said a 14-year-old girl. “He hangs around at the park.”

But Vega said the shooting does not appear to be “a gang retribution kind of thing.”

“What it appears is that these two fellows are in this area,” Vega said. “They’re not from here. They were tampering with the vehicle, and the owner of the vehicle exits the house, sees them, there’s a confrontation of some kind and he fires.”

Garnica stayed sporadically with his 19-year-old girlfriend and their 4-month-old son at her mother’s house on the block where the shooting occurred, according to a man who identified himself as the girlfriend’s brother.

“To tell you the truth I don’t think he has a home,” said the brother, who also lives in the house and asked not to be identified. “He’s one of these guys, you see him one day, then you don’t see him for a week, then you see him again.”

He knew little about Garnica’s private life other than that he was a member of a gang. “It bothered me a lot,” the brother said from the family’s front porch. “I was always scared for the safety of my home.”

Like his neighbors, he awoke to gunshots though he did not venture outside--”That’s the stupid thing to do,” he said--until several minutes after it became quiet again. By that time, Garnica had vanished. Everyone in the house was taken to the police station and questioned, he said.

Neighbors mused over how their neighborhood has changed in recent years.

Although the block looked calm enough Friday as children rode their bicycles, dogs romped in front yards and cats sunned themselves, just last week, according to neighbors, a man on the block inexplicably killed his wife.

“It never was like this before,” said Mary Medve, 82, who has lived there for 44 years with her husband. “It used to be beautiful. You could walk up the street to the store, leave the door unlocked, come back and nothing would be touched.”

But Alex Ross, 67, a third-generation Angeleno who has lived in his house since 1930, said he still feels relatively comfortable. “I still walk at night,” Ross said. “I don’t walk blindly but I still feel safe.”