Fear a Block Long : As Gangs Wage War, Life on Shatto Place Means Being Ready to Duck

In the shadow of Wilshire Boulevard’s commercial high-rises, the residents of a block-long stretch of Shatto Place live with a sort of fear more natural to a place like Sarajevo.

Rarely do they let their children play in the street or socialize outside the aging brick buildings that line the short block between Wilshire and 7th Street.

Many are afraid to go outside because they, too, live on a battlefront. The 600 block of Shatto Place is controlled by one powerful street gang, and a rival gang’s territory is just a block away.

All too often, their war over turf and drug profits rages just outside the residents’ doorsteps.

Lately, the casualties have escalated. On a Friday evening two weeks ago, two young men--one of them a juvenile--were shot to death on the block by rival gang members, and a third victim was murdered in a shooting two days later. The second shooting resulted in yet another death: A police car responding to the call accidentally struck and killed a 10-year-old boy playing in the street several blocks away.

“It seems like every other day, something happens,” said Francisco Gonzales, a hotel cook and father of three who has lived on the block for three years. “There are always bullets flying around. We can’t go outside. The only time I ever take my children outside is to accompany them to school.”

Gonzales was one of the few people on the street one recent morning when he ventured outside to chat with a produce vendor. While the intersection of Shatto and Wilshire bustles with office workers, white-collar patrons of an outdoor cafe and book-laden students hurrying in and out of a computer school, Shatto Place becomes eerily deserted about mid-block as it stretches toward 7th.

On that corner, a wall painted with ominous black letters almost 10 feet high reading diesiocho (eighteen in Spanish) announces the presence of the gang that controls the block--one of dozens of “cliques” of the 18th Street gang scattered throughout Los Angeles--and serves as a warning for would-be intruders to keep out.

Police say the 600 block’s recent history has been a violent one. In 1990, a gang-related double murder occurred near the site where the victims were slain two weeks ago. There were two other homicides in 1992, one of them gang-related.

Although the surrounding neighborhood is also prone to gang violence, the 600 block is particularly vulnerable because it lies just a few paces north of the territorial boundary separating 18th Street, which police say is largely Mexican American, from the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha. In the surrounding Westlake neighborhood, home to a booming narcotics trade, control of turf determines the right to sell drugs.

“The boundary line is 7th Street,” said Detective Terry Wessel of the LAPD’s Rampart Division, which patrols the area. “So Shatto is disposed to violence. In the past three years, we’ve had at least a dozen nonfatal shootings reported there. And if no one gets hit, they usually don’t get reported.”

In the eight square miles patrolled by the Rampart Division, close to 15 gangs battle over territory. The area has one of the city’s highest violent crime rates, with 89 homicides and 2,104 non-domestic aggravated assaults recorded for 1994, more than any other division in the department’s Central Bureau. Fifty-three homicides have been recorded in the area this year.

For some Shatto Place residents, daily life means being constantly on the alert. One 20-year-old man who grew up on the 600 block and still lives there has developed a survival tactic: Whenever an unfamiliar car drives by, he gets ready to hit the ground.

“If a car passes, I just get low,” said the man, who declined to give his name. “My friend’s father got caught in cross-fire a couple of years ago, and he almost died. I used to walk down the street to go visit my brother and his family and watch movies with them. But I don’t do that anymore. It’s too scary walking back at night.”

The block started slipping into 18th Street’s control about five years ago, he said, when several gang members moved into the neighborhood and began selling drugs. The clique is now headquartered in one building where, ever since the last murder, he has seen members hanging around outside “just waiting for somebody to shoot.”

A few days ago, the young man said, he was riding in a car that belonged to a friend from outside the neighborhood. As they passed a gang member on the sidewalk, the man ducked as if to dodge a spray of bullets.

“Then he recognized me, and just kept walking,” he said. “I guess he thought the car belonged to someone from the other gang.” He wonders what might have happened to his friend had he not been in the car.

Three suspects were arrested shortly after the double homicide two weeks ago, which claimed the lives of William Abrayo, 26, and Roberto Vargas, 14, both of whom police believe were members of the 18th Street gang. According to Detective Andy Cicoria, all three men arrested--Jose Romero, 26, Rigoberto Martinez, 21, and Eric Franco, 21--are believed to be members of the Salvadoran gang. Police suspect they were also involved in a shooting on the same block that left two 18th Street members wounded in late June.

The suspects were arraigned this month on two counts of murder each, Cicoria said, and two were charged with attempted murder for firing on police officers who arrived at the scene. All three are being held without bail pending a preliminary hearing Tuesday.

The suspect is still at large in the second fatal shooting the following Sunday, which killed 20-year-old Nery Rodriguez, a man police say did not have a gang record. One resident who saw the shooting says he recognized the attacker as an 18th Street member and has seen him around since, but is afraid to approach police for fear of retaliation.

Despite the arrests, the violence has not stopped. A week ago Wednesday, a member of 18th Street was shot at, but not hit, on the corner of 7th and Shatto.

The young man who grew up there says he has not heard any gunshots on the block for the past three or four days, which to him seems like a long time.

“But I can still always hear shots on the next block,” he said. “And I know that’s where the other gang is.”