1 Brother Killed, 1 Left to Mourn After Shooting

Carlos Castillo, 25, lay in a hospital bed Monday in critical condition, breathing through a respirator and believing his 23-year-old brother Juan was still alive.

If Juan had been killed in the weekend drive-by shooting in which Carlos was injured, Carlos told his family, then he wanted to die.

So the brothers’ mother, Dolores Cortes, on Monday again assured Carlos that his brother was recuperating at another hospital, then drove to a mortuary and tried to scrape together money to bury Juan in Mexico.

“My life is all sadness now,” said Cortes, 45, breaking into tears as she sat in the cramped apartment she shared with Juan and Carlos, her husband and their four other children.

As the eldest sons in their large family, Juan and Carlos were inseparable, friends and relatives said Monday. They shared a bedroom, supported the family, worked on cars together and went to parties together. Los Angeles police say they were also in the same gang, which led to their being shot together Saturday night.

The brothers were en route to a party in Carlos’ Oldsmobile with two other friends when they halted at a stop sign at the corner of DeGarmo Avenue and Lanark Street about 10:30 p.m., LAPD Det. Charles Uribe said. Another car pulled alongside and someone opened fire with a semiautomatic gun, then drove off, leaving Carlos and his two other passengers injured and Juan dead.

“My brother just said he turned around and the gun was pointed to his head,” Carlos’ 12-year-old half-brother, Luis Andrade, said. “He couldn’t even move” it was so fast.

Carlos was hit in his torso and right hand, one bullet puncturing his lung and the other tearing off two fingers, family members said. A doctor advised them not to tell Carlos that Juan had died.

Police said the shooting was the work of rival gang members, but no arrests have been made.

In the narrow bedroom that Juan and Carlos shared, photographs of the pair as children in Mexico hung on the walls and crosses hung above each bed. Juan Castillo’s younger brothers proudly displayed his pencil drawings of the Virgin Mary and flowers to a visitor.

“He had thought of drawing the Virgin Mary on his wall,” said Guadalupe Diaz, 19, Juan Castillo’s fiancee and girlfriend of nearly four years. “He wanted to go to school for that [art], but he didn’t make it.”

She said Juan Castillo worked as a house painter, helping his mother and stepfather with rent and paying for some groceries, and also sending money back to two sisters and a grandmother in Mexico.

Juan Castillo came to the United States about five years ago to see his mother and older brother, and to make money he could send back to Mexico, his mother said.

“He had more going for himself here than there,” Diaz said.

Carlos Castillo helped his brother with his English, and Juan introduced his older brother to Guadalupe Diaz’s cousin, who became Carlos’ fiancee. The brothers had planned to marry the cousins next summer.

Now Carlos Castillo’s mother is afraid she won’t have enough money to fulfill what she believes would be her son’s final wish. “If anything happened to him, he’d want to go back to Mexico, where he was born,” she said.

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