Unknown Visitor May Be Key to 3 Killings at Pacoima Home

The last words Jose Martin Ramos was heard to say were directions to his new house--the first his family ever owned--in a phone conversation that may have guided his killer to his door in Pacoima.

Minutes later, the 20-year-old construction worker lay fatally shot near the front door along with two guests who had come to his house for a Sunday brunch.

“No one saw what they looked like,” Francisca Acosta, Jose Ramos’ mother, said Monday about the assailant she said came to the front door. “But it doesn’t matter anyhow. They are not going to revive my son.”

Ramos was killed about noon along with Rosario Ruelas, 25, of Pacoima and Federico Lopez, 30, of Mira Loma.

Police had no suspects Monday. The killings did not appear to be gang-related, according to investigators.

“We are following up on leads, anything [the family] may have told us,” said Lt. Al Moen of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division, which is handling the investigation.

Jose Ramos had lived in the house in the 13800 block of Eustace Street with his mother, brother Fernando Ramos, 19, and 21-year-old wife, Lupita, who is two months pregnant with the couple’s first child.

The family came from Guadalajara 10 years ago. By last year, they had saved enough money to buy the modest home in the working-class neighborhood not far from San Fernando High School.

Sunday, 10 people were gathered at the house for a noontime meal.

Just minutes before the killing, the phone rang and Jose Ramos told others in the house to let him answer. He spoke briefly with someone and hung up.

A short time later, according to Fernando Ramos, a man came to the front door, shook Jose Ramos’ hand and talked to him briefly before leaving.

Fernando Ramos also left through the front door without paying attention to what the man looked like. On his way out, he said he saw two other men waiting in a car in front of the house but paid no attention to them either.

The family and their guests had been in the backyard eating. A few of them heard sounds that resembled falling metal, according to family members, but no one left the house immediately to investigate.

About 10 minutes later Fernando Ramos returned and found the three bodies just in the hallway.

“My son said, ‘Mom, what are you doing? They killed Martin,’ ” Francisca Acosta said. “They were all dead.”

The family speculated that the first man came to the door, left and then returned with the other two men.

“They came to kill him,” said Carlos Acosta, Jose Ramos’ uncle.