Stray Bullet Kills Man in His Bed

Amalia Guerra sat on the edge of her bed Wednesday, trying to fathom how, of all the places it could have gone, a stray bullet had to enter her home and pierce her husband’s heart as he lay sleeping.

“He had been at church with me just about an hour earlier,” said Guerra, holding her face in her hands. “I should have held him there with me. I shouldn’t have let him go. Why didn’t I do that?”

Jose Guerra Vargas, 40, had gone to bed about 9:20 p.m. Tuesday when a stray bullet ripped through a plaster wall and fatally struck the garment worker in the chest, investigators said.

Vargas put his hand to his chest to stop the bleeding, then stumbled out of bed to get help, family members said.

Two of his four children had been watching a Spanish movie on television, family members said. When they heard shots being fired in the street, the 12-year-old boy hit the floor. The 18-year-old daughter, Maria Guerra, heard her father scream and ran to him.

Maria Guerra said her father fell in her arms as she opened the door to his bedroom.

“All he said was that he loved us, and then he died,” the daughter said. “I felt scared. I just kept screaming.”

Vargas was pronounced dead at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Police learned that shots had been fired in the 1100 block of South Cypress Street and concluded that one of the bullets entered the wood-frame house and struck Vargas, Sgt. Dick Faust said.

Investigators think the bullet came from a semiautomatic handgun, Faust said. No arrest has been made in connection with the shooting.

“It appears that a suspect had opened fire on possible gang members in front of the residence,” Faust said. “[Vargas] wasn’t the intended victim.”

The family’s one-story house is in a neighborhood where the sound of gunfire is common, Maria Guerra said. Gang graffiti is scrawled in spray paint on a nearby parking lot.

But the close-knit family had believed that if they stayed indoors at night and were careful, they would be safe, the daughter said.

“We just minded our own business and we thought that everything would be OK,” Maria Guerra said. “But that’s not true.”

On Wednesday, dozens of relatives and friends gathered at Vargas’ home. They brought canisters of food, and they cried as they remembered a gentle man whose life revolved around his family and his love of music.

Anna Bernal, a niece, traced a bullet hole the size of a dime next to Vargas’ pillow and shook her head in disbelief.

“Who would have thought?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

Vargas, born in Mexico, had been playing the guitar since he was a boy and was part of a band called Los Incas. Family members said he and Amalia Guerra fell in love at first sight when they met at a fiesta and married when both were 17.

The couple moved the family from Sahuayo, Mexico, in 1994 with hopes of higher-paying jobs and better education for their children.

The family rented a two-bedroom home in a Santa Ana neighborhood so they could be close to relatives. Vargas’ 12-year-old son, Guillermo Guerra, and Maria Guerra both attend public school and do their household chores after homework at night. A 21-year-old daughter, Adriana Guerra, helps her mother in a housecleaning business. Another son, Jose Guerra Jr., lives in Mexico.

Vargas worked for Alstyle Apparel & Activewear in Costa Mesa, where he helped make T-shirts, cutting out the necks of the garments, said Susan Soto, a co-worker.

“Everyone here admires him a lot and we are all very sad after hearing that he was hit by a bullet,” Soto said. “He didn’t talk a lot and just concentrated on his work. He was a very nice man.”

Vargas usually arose about 5:30 a.m. on weekdays to get ready for work, and that was the reason he left Saintannes Church early Tuesday night to go home, despite his wife’s pleas to stay and listen to the Gospel.

“When I came home, the police were already here,” Amalia Guerra said. “I’m sitting here and all I could think about is missing him. Every day when he comes back home from work, he would call out my name and look for me and give me a hug. I miss that hug.”