18-Year-Old Arrested in Shooting at Gas Station : Crime: Police say the 14-year-old victim, who sat in a car as his companions fled during the gunfire, was not the intended target in the gang-related killing.

Anaheim police arrested an 18-year-old man Thursday in connection with the slaying of a 14-year-old boy who was shot to death days before he was to begin high school.

Eddie Felix Martinez of Anaheim is suspected of fatally shooting Agustin Blancas Jr., also of Anaheim, in the head and upper body Wednesday afternoon. Police said Agustin was an innocent victim in the gang-related shooting.

“He was not the intended victim,” Police Lt. Ted Labahn said. “We don’t believe he was affiliated with any gangs, but other occupants [in the car with him] were.”

Agustin was sitting in a car at a gas station in the 2400 block of West Lincoln Avenue when a man got out of a green sedan, walked up to the boy and opened fire.

Agustin’s friends, one of whom was pumping gas, fled when the gunfire began and were not injured.

Investigators checking several places frequented by Martinez on Thursday located his car, which was not the same vehicle used in Wednesday’s shooting. He was arrested and is held in the city jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Family members said Thursday that Agustin had gone to the beach with his brother and friends about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, just after his mother, Jolanda Trejo, had left for work. When Trejo’s daughter called her to tell her about the shooting, she rushed to the gas station where her son died.

“I had never imagined that anything like this can happen when I and my husband decided to come to the United States,” Trejo said. “I am so sad right now.”

In the sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment where Trejo had moved five of her seven children about a month ago, friends offered hugs and condolences Thursday and shared memories of Agustin.

They remembered that he loved drawing sports cars and then hanging them in his room, and that his goal was to graduate from high school. “He was there for everybody,” said his sister, Alejandra Blancas, 20. “He made everybody laugh. . . . “

“Our family is devastated,” she said.

The family moved to Anaheim in 1988 from Mexico for job opportunities and a better education system, Blancas said. In recent years, Trejo and her husband had separated. Of the couple’s seven children, five had stayed with her. One lives with Trejo’s husband and another is in Mexico, Blancas said.

Robert Montenegro, principal at Dale Junior High where Agustin graduated earlier this year, said the teen-ager was remembered as a quiet but friendly student.

Agustin was going to be enrolled at Savanna High School this fall.