Slain Samaritan Planned to Wed

By most standards, Margarito Pina Estrella led a careful and conscientious life.

The 26-year-old Santa Ana man rarely went out at night, except to Mass, friends and family said Monday. He did not drink, worked a double shift at a local garment factory and was carefully saving for the wedding he planned in his native Mexican state of Queretaro later this year.

On Sunday, a split-second decision to chase a man who had snatched a 61-year-old woman’s purse ended Pina’s life when the thief turned and shot him in the chest.

“He wasn’t a genius. He was just a normal person,” Pina’s eldest brother, Miguel Pina Estrella, 32, said Monday as other brothers and cousins sat stone-faced in the home Pina used to share with his uncle and aunt.

Pina had planned to return to Queretaro in 22 days to be with his fiancee, whom he hoped to marry in December, his brother said.

He had lived in the Santa Ana area for seven years, holding on to his hard-won job as a clothes cutter at a local garment factory while he returned to Queretaro periodically to help his parents grow corn and beans on their rancho outside the town of San Juan del Rio, his brother said.

Pina came back to Santa Ana most recently about four months ago, working double shifts and saving the money he did not send home to his parents for his wedding, said friend Raquel Mendoza, 38.

“He was a good person,” said Mendoza, who rented a room to Pina after he recently moved from the nearby home of his aunt and uncle. “He never went out. He just worked. He didn’t drink. He was very Catholic.”

The family was so stunned by its sudden loss that by Monday they had not been able to fully break the news to Pina’s parents. Family members told the couple only that their son, one of 12 children, was hospitalized in grave condition.

“They know a little about what happened, but not too much,” Miguel Pina Estrella said. “They wouldn’t be able to take the blow.”

Friends and family described Pina as a kind man who attended Mass at least weekly at Immaculate Heart of Mary church nearby, listened to music in his home and played basketball with friends at a nearby park.

Pina was walking home from church about 3 p.m. on Sunday when the purse snatching occurred. A young man in his late teens or early 20s grabbed the purse from a woman as she got into her car in the 1300 block of South Center Street, police said.

Screaming, she chased the thief for about a block and a half down Center and east onto Elder Avenue before turning back to call police, Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bob Clark said.

At some point, Pina joined the chase, taking over when the woman gave up. With Pina about 20 feet behind, the pair had rounded a corner and headed north on South Shelley Street when the thief fired once, apparently to dissuade Pina, police said.

Instead, Pina “got a little closer, and the guy turned around and fired two times. One hit him in the chest and proved to be the fatal shot,” Clark said. Pina died at the scene.

On Monday, family members who gathered at the Santa Ana home of Pina’s aunt and uncle stared silently at one another in the family living room and gazed from the front porch, wondering how they would raise the more than $4,000 it will cost to send Pina’s body home to Mexico for burial.

Clark called Pina’s pursuit “a noble thing to do,” but stressed that people should not put themselves in danger.

“It’s better to observe the circumstances at a distance and then telephone the police as soon as possible to relay what you saw and a description of the suspect,” he said. “We would have certainly hoped that he would have backed off and let it go. We would have had one less tragic homicide.”

Police are working to develop a composite sketch of the assailant, who wore a plaid long-sleeved Pendleton shirt and dark pants, and had shaved his head.

Clark said police believe the youth may live in the area and probably is a gang member because of “the sheer callousness of the crime that was committed.”

“He didn’t have to steal a little lady’s purse to begin with,” Clark said. “We think that the guy probably lives somewhere nearby. We think he’s probably a neighborhood product and eventually we are going to find out who that is, through the neighborhood.”