$6.6 Million Awarded to Man Disabled in Gang Shooting : Lawsuit: Jury finds Maravilla Foundation negligent in 1990 incident. Instead of calling police, staffer tried to escort victim through gauntlet of youths.

Not long after his 16th birthday, Ruben Martinez set out on a routine errand: to pick up his last paycheck from a summer job as a janitor before he went out for hamburgers with friends.

But that simple chore turned into a terrifying predicament. Outside the East Los Angeles community foundation where he went for the check, angry gang members screamed threats at him. When a foundation staffer tried to escort him through a gauntlet of gang youths, a 15-year-old boy shot Martinez twice, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

On Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Martinez $6.6 million in damages, agreeing with him that the Maravilla Foundation and its staffer were negligent in trying to shield him from the gang, rather than calling the Sheriff’s Department for help.

“I’m really relieved,” said Martinez, who sued Maravilla after the Sept. 12, 1990, shooting. “I’m going to be able to not be dependent on the county paying for my medical care. I can now take care of myself, and get the best doctors.”

Maravilla executives did not return telephone calls for comment, and the foundation’s attorney, Greg W. Garrotta, declined to comment. The nonprofit foundation places East Los Angeles residents in job-training programs, provides subsidies for low-income people who have trouble paying utility bills, and has helped clean up graffiti.

Martinez’s lawyer, Stanley K. Jacobs, said the large damage award will not necessarily hurt the foundation or put it out of business. He said he will not seek to collect from the foundation if it agrees to let him proceed for the full amount against its insurer.

“There’s no way in heaven that Maravilla will ever pay a penny,” Jacobs said. “We’ll do nothing to harm Maravilla. We want them in the community.”

Jacobs said the series of events that led to Martinez’s shooting began with a mix-up.

Through the Los Angeles archdiocese, Martinez had gotten a job that summer as a janitor at East Los Angeles College. Normally, he picked up his paychecks at the college.

But a college employee mistakenly told a friend of his who also was a temporary janitor that his final check would be available at the Maravilla Foundation, Jacobs said. A community center run by the foundation is in the Maravilla housing project, home to members of the Rascals 13 street gang.

Martinez, his friend and four companions drove in two cars to the community center. After they went in, Jacobs said, about 30 gang members gathered outside, shrieking threats at the youths for invading their turf.

A foundation employee mistakenly believed that Martinez and his friends also were gang members, and had used a telephone to “call for backup,” Jacobs said. The employee summoned the foundation’s 6-foot, 6-inch-tall recreation director, Ike Whitfield, who told Martinez’s group that he would escort them to their cars.

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Martinez said he thought that Whitfield, a former college basketball player, could handle the gang members. But as Martinez’s group crossed a parking lot, a gang member tried to strike one of them with a bicycle handlebar, Jacobs said. Other gang members screamed at them and someone hurled a bottle.

Suddenly, a 15-year-old youth opened fire with a .22-caliber pistol. Martinez was shot in the neck and back, one slug severing his spinal cord. One of his friends was hit in the leg, another in the arm.

Jacobs said foundation employees, including Whitfield, were told to call a sheriff’s station three blocks away in the event of a gang confrontation, rather than try to intervene on their own. Whitfield, now a recreation leader in Michigan, could not be reached for comment.

Jacobs said he believes that Whitfield, who had worked at the foundation for five years, was genuinely trying to protect Martinez and his friends. But the older man underestimated the danger of the situation, the attorney said.

“He made a negligent decision,” Jacobs said. “All they had to do was close the door and bolt it; it was a metal door. Then they could have called the Sheriff’s Department . . . and the sheriff’s gang squad would have defused it.”

Martinez, now 20, is in a wheelchair and not expected to walk again. After he was shot, he moved from his Boyle Heights neighborhood to Norwalk, where he is cared for by his mother, an unemployed housecleaner, and his girlfriend. He attends Whittier Adult School, hoping to finish high school and go on to college.

“I’m just trying to get my life back on track. I’m happy to be alive. With this being over, I can finally move on and look forward to my life and, hopefully, accomplish something with my life.”

Times staff writer Frank B. Williams contributed to this story.