Gang Warfare Shrouds a Neighborhood in Grief

The 1400 block of East 59th Place burns with four makeshift shrines, one for each fatality in a 24-hour period. The yellow crime scene tape is stuffed in garbage cans, ready for pickup. An uneasy calm prevails amid the shellshocked residents, who watch every car for more danger.

This neat, tree-lined, working-class block, where many residents have lived for a decade and roosters frequently crow, is in shock from gunfire, a byproduct of a war between a local gang and one from outside the neighborhood.

The expression “war zone” is thrown around too casually as a description of the central city. It never applied on 59th Place before.

Now it does: four dead, three more wounded in a trio of violent confrontations.

On a block where use of first names was common, there is fear.

“I’m afraid to go to the corner to use the pay phone,” said Griselda Robles, a 19-year-old mother who lives in a house without a telephone. “I’m afraid to take my baby outside.”

“I feel like a prisoner in my own home,” said one women who stood by her fence, straining to see down the block where her two brothers walk home from work. “I don’t want them to take the bus.”

Exactly what sparked Sunday’s gang violence remains a mystery. It seemed to hit with the strength of an earthquake, reverberating again and again in aftershocks. There was speculation that more payback shootings were taking place elsewhere, making further retaliation a constant possibility.

The first shooting occurred about 1:25 a.m. Sunday. Felipe Vazquez, 24, who lived on the block, and Enrique Fajardo, 17, said to live a couple of blocks away, were killed in a drive-by shooting. Two others, Salvador Parra and Michelle Alcon, 22, were seriously wounded in the attack.

That evening about 5:40 p.m., shots were fired one door to the east in another drive-by. Alejandro Torrez, 15, who also lived on the block, was hit several times in the upper body. Rushed to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, he died a short time later. Javier Ramirez, 23, was wounded in the leg.

Sheriff’s deputies were investigating that shooting four hours later when the third drive-by occurred at the other end of the block.

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Francisco Ruiz, 22, of nearby Huntington Park, who had come to pay his respects to Alejandro, his cousin, was struck once in the upper body. He died later at King/Drew Medical Center.

All the victims were gang members, authorities said. No arrests have been made.

“It was always a good block, but things have gone bad, very bad,” said Percy Burnley, 68, who has lived on the block for 40 years.

He remained haunted Monday by the popping sound of Sunday’s gunfire.

“Just last week some of us were saying we needed to organize a block club, a Neighborhood Watch,” he said. “I guess we should have done that sooner.”

Francisco Ruiz’s tearful father, Francisco Ruiz Sr., 50, stood on the lawn where his son collapsed from his wounds. Yes, he had talked to his son about the dangers of gangs, he said, but the conversations were short and cumbersome.

“It’s sometimes difficult for a father to talk to his son,” he said in Spanish. “But now I wish I had before they killed him.”

At the other end of the block, Valentin Vazquez, 31, and several family members put flowers on the spot where his brother had been gunned down, a few doors from the Vazquez home.

“He was trying to get away from all that [gang life], little by little,” said Vazquez, a county welfare eligibility worker who has lived on the street for 15 years. “But you live here for a long time and you know all these people. He grew up with all these guys. It is not easy.”

He said Felipe worked as a teaching assistant in a first-grade class at 49th Street Elementary School, and was taking classes at a community college.

“This was a nice neighborhood,” he said. “It is only recently that we have had problems.”

Several families on the block trace their roots to the same community of Villmar in Michoacan, Mexico. The elaborate wrought-iron fences on many front lawns reflect the homeland. Dogs wandered and some older children roller-skated Monday as the grown-ups reflected on what had suddenly changed, and what might happen now.

Earl Bianton, who has lived on the block for 26 years, had been forced to stare at three of the four corpses, which lay for hours within 10 feet of one another outside his front door. He recalled having taken one of the young men on a fishing trip when the boy was about 11 years old.

“I’m upset about the whole thing,” he said. “The gangs cause the problem.”

Maria Duenas, 40, one of the immigrants from the Michoacan town, said she had hoped a better life could be found in Los Angeles. But she is beginning to realize it is not an escape.

“No matter where we go, things are the same,” she said. “There are gangs here. There are gangs there. And they all do the same terrible things.”

Another East 59th Place resident, who requested anonymity, watched as gang members stood near one of the shrines, smoking marijuana and glaring at passersby, apparently on guard for rivals.

“I will never let my son be a part of that,” the woman said in disgust. “Their mothers should take control of them. I pray for their mothers. I pray for us all.”