Southern California Voices / A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Community Essay : Drive-By Victim: ‘What Sweet Thoughts Did He Have When He Was 3?’ : A killing in San Clemente points to the <i> us </i> and <i> them </i> that we have become.

Why the shoes? The dead boy was slumped like dirty laundry in the street next to his car, a firefighter half-heartedly pumping on his chest. High-top basketball shoes sat next to his body. Those empty shoes made me cry.

I had just rolled Dakota, my sleeping 3-year-old son, out of the library and into the cool evening, into the usually quiet little downtown of San Clemente. But fire trucks and police cars were barreling down the street toward the main intersection.

I ran over to what I thought was a serious car wreck. “How did the wreck happen?” I asked a fellow gawker.

“There was no wreck,” a man said. “He got shot.”

A woman added: “It’s rival gangs. Some kind of drive-by shooting.”

A drive-by? In my neighborhood? In San Clemente?

The shooting happened right in front of the automatic teller machine I’d been about to use. If we’d left the library two minutes earlier, we’d have been in the middle of it. For a moment I almost wished I’d seen it.

Like--I could see some violent death up close without personal risk. Like--life is a television show.

Then I realized what that meant. My son could have been killed. Someone’s son was killed.

My son woke up, surrounded by firetrucks and flashing lights. He’s wanted to be a firefighter ever since the house across the street burned down last year.

I checked his reaction, trying to decide whether to stay or go. The scene was tragic but not ugly or graphic. We stayed.

“Daddy,” Dakota said, “I want you to be a fireman, too, so I can get big and be a fireman next to you.”

Paramedics put the boy’s body on a stretcher. What had he wanted to be when he grew up? What sweet thoughts did he have when he was 3?

“The firemen are helping that man,” I told my boy. “It’s good to be a fireman.

“That man die, Daddy? Like our goldfish?” Attendants closed the ambulance and drove it away.

“That man going to heaven, Daddy?”

“Yes, son. To heaven.”

The police cordoned off the crime scene, so we all had to move back. “The police should come in here and crack down,” said a middle-aged man. “We need more cops in the trenches who know how to play rough.”

“That’s right,” said a middle-aged woman. “But people just don’t know what’s good for them.”

Just then two young Latinas pushed past us. They saw the car. They screamed and sobbed and fell to their knees and shook their fists at the sky.

The police shooed them away.

The middle-aged woman spoke again: “San Clemente’s supposed to be the whitest city in California. But look what we still have to put up with.”

Then middle-aged man replied: “There’s always Idaho.”

My son and I walked home, two blocks away.

The tiny headline of the tiny newspaper article about the dead boy read: “Gang Member Shot.”

In other words: “Pay No Attention.”

Or even: “Good Riddance.”

The river’s rising fast now. The bridge is washed out. Standing here on one bank, all I can see on the other side are empty shoes.