Officer Remembered for His Determination

As Police Academy classmates, Mario Navidad and Ralph Mendoza shared the dais Sept. 9, 1995, when both graduated into the ranks of Los Angeles police officers. As partners, they worked a tough shift: 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the city’s Wilshire Division, one of the most diverse and complicated communities in American law enforcement.

And just before nightfall Sunday--three days before Christmas--Navidad and Mendoza were united in one final moment, a shootout with a 17-year-old that left Navidad dead at the hands of the suspect and the suspect dead at the hands of Mendoza.

For Los Angeles police officers, the death was a shattering holiday reminder of the everyday perils of their work, one made all the more poignant by the routine circumstances that led up to it. A young man suspected of shoplifting beer was confronted by the two officers in an alley around the corner from a 7-Eleven. That type of encounter happens every day for police; this time it erupted in gunfire.

According to police, Navidad and Mendoza did not even have time to get out of their car before the suspect, Aleim Ortiz, shifted the beer from his right hand to his left, reached into his pocket and opened fire.

“This was a low-grade misdemeanor,” said Capt. William Gartland, commanding officer of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, which is investigating the case. “Before they even had a chance to tactically deploy, they were in the middle of a shooting.”

As investigators probed reports that Ortiz may have robbed another 7-Eleven that evening, friends of the young man deplored the shooting and described Ortiz as a peaceful but distraught teenager--alienated both from his mother and his 2 1/2-year-old daughter.

His girlfriend, Mary Rivas, 22, said her boyfriend would not have shot at police, but she added: “He said he didn’t want to live. . . . He said when the time comes, he’s not going to run from it. He’s not scared of it.”

Ortiz, said by friends to go by the nicknames “Shaggy” and “Mr. Shaggs,” last attended Mount Vernon Middle School in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles. But Ortiz apparently had dropped out of school after ninth grade; his friends and the police say he belonged to a gang. Los Angeles school officials have no record of him beyond Mount Vernon.

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Friends say Ortiz lived with cousins and others but did not call any one place home. He most recently lived with Rivas at her Fairfax Avenue apartment, just down the street from where the shooting occurred.

While Rivas mourned the death of her boyfriend, police and city leaders sadly remembered a fallen colleague, a 27-year-old man born in Los Angeles and raised mostly in Mexico. A strong runner who was quiet about many passions but occasionally bragged about his children, Navidad had long yearned to become a cop and finally earned his badge after years of going to school while working at a Culver City supermarket.

“Mario had a quiet sense of determination,” said Officer Richard Ulley, another graduate of the academy class that included Navidad and Mendoza. “I always knew he was the kind of guy I would have no problem trusting my life with in the field.”

Officer Mike Johnson car-pooled with Navidad to and from the academy, getting to know him as they pursued careers in law enforcement. Johnson, too, ended up at Wilshire Division. And Monday, he joined other colleagues in draping his police badge with a black band to memorialize his colleague and friend.

Like other colleagues, Johnson described Navidad as a man of resolve, one for whom police work was a lifelong aspiration. “It was a dream of his,” Johnson said.

Johnson and other Wilshire officers rushed to the aid of Navidad’s widow. Some officers met with her Monday, and others planned a trip to her home to string Christmas lights in memory of Navidad, whose very name carries a reminder of the holiday. Police from across the city are contributing to a trust fund for Navidad’s two children, one 4 years old, one 9 months; public contributions are pouring in as well.

As word of the tragedy spread beyond the Police Department, the Wilshire station was deluged with calls and visits; one man arrived at the front desk of the station and plopped down a $100 bill for the trust fund. (Police Department officials said contributions can be made to: Navidad Blue Ribbon Trust Account, c/o Wilshire Community Police Station, 4861 West Venice Blvd., Los Angeles 90019.)

Other expressions of sympathy flowed through the station Monday too. Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher addressed roll calls, reminding officers that the department’s leaders stand behind the men and women working in the street. And Mayor Richard Riordan, whose life has included the loss of both a son and a daughter, spoke haltingly of the grief that accompanies every police death.

“It just hit me like a ton of bricks,” Riordan said. “Unless you’ve been through this, you can’t imagine the depth of sadness.”

At the 7-Eleven where the beer was stolen, customers stopped by to ask about the incident, then headed to the site of the shooting carrying flowers.

By midday Monday in the bloodstained, narrow alley, two makeshift shrines had sprouted. White carnations honored Navidad; a peach-colored rose and a large votive candle about 20 feet away stood in memory of Ortiz.

Ortiz’s girlfriend and her friends squatted around the memorial they erected. At one point, one of the young women grabbed the white carnations that had been left for Navidad and added them to Ortiz’s collection of flowers.

“They shot him. They left him here to die,” Rivas said. “They just left him out there in the cold.”

Police officials, however, stressed that no evidence suggests any error by Navidad or his partner.

While the city government and its Police Department reeled from the death of a colleague, a smaller, equally moving scene unfolded at Navidad’s previous employer, the Royal Market, where he worked as bagger, cashier and clerk--all the while pining for a career as a cop.

Under the party pinatas dangling cheerily from the ceiling, cashiers and customers at the Culver City market talked in sad, stumbling tones about Navidad’s death.

“Did you hear about Mario?” night manager John Moreno asked a customer as he rang up some ground beef.

“Mario? The one who used to work here?”

“Yeah,” Moreno responded. “They killed him.”

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The customer shook his head in disbelief, muttered something about gang violence. “He was a nice guy,” he said.

Navidad’s reserve, they said, would melt in the company of friends. He loved to watch boxing matches--and, especially, to cheer for Julio Cesar Chavez, whose roots stretch back to the same town in Mexico where Navidad’s parents grew up. Navidad played second base on the Royal Market softball team, and though he griped a bit about always batting leadoff, he made the most of his skills--his hustle and his ability to make contact with the ball.

“He was my best player on the team,” his good friend Louie Navia said.

Store owner Marvin Sobel remembered Navidad as determined and ambitious, always a hard worker. He took on a low-level job as a grocery bagger when he was 16 years old and worked his way up.

Even as he worked at the supermarket, however, Navidad was taking criminology classes at Santa Monica College and pursuing his dream of a career in law enforcement.

“Ever since I knew him, he wanted to be a police officer,” said Teresa Webster, a cashier who has worked at Royal Market for 10 years. “That’s all he talked about. That’s all he wanted.”

Moreno, choking up, added: “It was a form of improving himself. Not to belittle our profession, but he just wanted to rise above mediocrity.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon contributed to this story.