Good Life Sidetracked by Boyz Life

He was an A student in high school, a hospital volunteer and, in his first job, he was trusted to deliver gold and diamonds.

At a small community college near Bakersfield, he continued to excel, earning straight A’s and a certificate of recognition from the California Assembly.

By all appearances, David Evangalista was beginning to hit his stride in life. No apparent limits to a promising future or hints that this “courteous, soft-spoken young man,” was concealing a dark and violent side.

But about the same time the Philippines native was acing chemistry and biology, police said, Evangalista (a.k.a Tattoo), was “getting his kicks” as a member of the Asian Boyz, one of the Los Angeles area’s most sophisticated and ruthless criminal street gangs.

“He had the ability, intelligence and the personality to make something of himself, but it didn’t turn out that way,” said Det. John Edwards of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Asian Gang Task Force. “He ended up getting sucked into gang life.”

Now, Evangalista, 22, of Taft, Calif., and six other men face trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in a series of drive-by shootings.

Sothi Mehn, 22, of Echo Park; Bunthoeun Roeung, 20, and Roatha Buth, 24, of Van Nuys; and Son Bui, 20, and Ky “Tony” Ngo, 21, both also from the San Fernando Valley, have pleaded not guilty in the case. A judge ruled last month that Kimorn Nuth, 16, of Van Nuys, can be tried as an adult for murder in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.

An eighth suspect, Marvin Mercado, 23, of Taft, is being sought by police after he fled last May to the Philippines to avoid prosecution.

Prosecutors said no decision has been made on whether to seek the death penalty in the case now expected to go to trial in Van Nuys Superior Court late this year or early next year.

Only one lawyer among the half-dozen representing the defendants would comment.

“David Evangalista knows some but not all of the people charged, and he certainly denies being in the Asian Boyz,” said Encino lawyer David Houchin, who like the other lawyers have denied his client’s gang affiliation and sought to distance him from others facing trial.

After a two-year investigation by the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Long Beach Police Department and the FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force, authorities said they have accumulated a mountain of evidence linking Evangalista and the other defendants to at least six drive-by slayings.

They also contend that the defendants were the hard core of the local Asian Boyz gang, estimated to have 200 members in Southern California and scores of affiliated groups spread from Northern California to Texas, Massachusetts and Florida.

“They were sophisticated, nomadic and multinational,” Edwards said of the gang, which filled its ranks with young Southeast Asian immigrants who, growing up in the United States, felt alienated from the traditional values that their parents brought from their native lands.

Members adorned themselves with a tattoo of a large dragon wrapped around an “A” for “Asian Boyz,” police said.

The gang’s victims included local Southeast Asian merchants, residents, rival gangs and innocent bystanders.

Investigators say they have linked the gang to at least 92 crimes from Santa Clarita to Newbury Park, from the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys to Sacramento.

They include 13 slayings, 39 attempted slayings, eight home-invasion robberies, 13 assaults, 11 robberies, one extortion, two auto thefts, a case of intimidating a witness and a federal violation of falsifying a passport application, said LAPD Det. Mel Arnold, who heads the Valley Bureau’s Asian Gang Task Force.

The crime spree began in 1994, with a spate of property offenses against the Southeast Asian community.

“They were rather profitable and enterprising in victimizing members of their own community,” Arnold said.

The gang made hundreds of thousands of dollars peddling stolen jewelry, computers, credit cards and cloned cellular phone numbers, police said.

In one more sign of their sophistication and business savvy, police said, the Asian Boyz were one of the first gangs to discover the financial benefits of peddling stolen car air bags.

Gang members would break into late-model cars, dismantle the steering system and take the air bags, which they resold for hundreds of dollars, authorities said.

But the local gang’s notoriety and downfall were sealed when they switched from stealing to targeting their rivals.

On April 14, 1995, the defendants allegedly entered the Valerio Gardens housing project in Van Nuys, armed with handguns, and ambushed rival gang members. In the fusillade, Armando Estrada and Miguel Limon were fatally wounded.

Three months later, the gang members allegedly committed two drive-bys on the same day, in Northridge and North Hills.

That was followed by a triple slaying in El Monte on Aug. 10, 1995, when some of the defendants fired semiautomatic handguns into a car they believed was carrying rival gang members on Interstate 10, police said.

The Asian Boyz gang was born, according to police, when two teenagers met on the asphalt playground of Cleveland High School in Reseda in the late 1980s.

For the next few years, Sothi Mehn and Marvin Mercado informally built the circle of friends and acquaintances who would later become the feared street gang, authorities allege.

Mehn and Mercado were born of similar means but in different countries and cultures. Mehn, whose parents were Cambodian immigrants, came to the U.S. around age 7 and settled in Oxnard. The family then moved to Reseda and later Echo Park, where they ran a downtown sewing business, police said.

Mercado lived a comfortable middle-class existence, police and friends said, thanks particularly to his mother’s success with a tax-preparation firm.

By the time Mercado reached Cleveland High School in the late 1980s, a family friend said, his parents had grown worried about “negative influences” and decided to move from Northridge to the relative tranquillity of Taft, a small town west of Bakersfield.

At the local high school and later Taft Community College, Mercado’s grades were lackluster, school officials said.

At the college, Mercado was joined by Evangalista, who was a native of the Philippines and had come to California from Queens, N.Y. They had been old friends who attended school together in the Philippines.

According to friends, Mercado hadn’t severed his ties to the San Fernando Valley and still hung out with his old friends.

“They were out a lot on the weekends,” said the family friend who requested anonymity. He added: “Nothing seemed to be wrong at the time.”

Others who knew them in Taft expressed shock at the charges.

“My reaction is either I’m completely naive and blind or the allegations are wrong,” said Ryan Cartnell, a teacher. “I suppose they could have lived a double life.”