Youth Kills 3 Family Members, Self

A 16-year-old youth shot his father, stepmother and 4-year-old half brother to death in the family’s Hyde Park apartment Tuesday morning before turning the gun on himself, Los Angeles police said.

The killer was identified as Renzo Alvarado. His body and those of his father, Rudolfo Alvarado, 51, his stepmother, Eva Veronica Gonzales, 36, and his half brother, whose name was not released, were discovered by police in separate rooms.

Police were called after the teenager’s 17-year-old brother and 10-year-old half sister returned home from school about 9 a.m. and saw the carnage in the second-floor apartment in the 6100 block of 11th Avenue.

“Physical evidence at the scene indicated that the 16-year-old, found dead on the floor of his room with a revolver still in his hand, had shot and killed each of his three victims with a single gunshot wound to the head,” said LAPD spokesman Jason Lee. “He had obtained the weapon about two months earlier and had additional rounds of ammunition in his pocket.”

Lee said the suspect and his father “had been arguing recently over the son’s flagrant use of marijuana inside the apartment. That looks like the motive.”

It is not known where the teenager got the gun.

Residents in the quiet Los Angeles neighborhood of apartments and modest homes near Inglewood described the killer as an aimless, temperamental youth who used drugs and apparently had “lots of trouble with police.”

“He was very quiet, but you could tell he was troubled,” said a neighbor, Darlene Watts.

“He had a temper,” said Renay Dickerson, another neighbor. “I never saw him go to school. He’d just ride his bike around the neighborhood. He would hang out with gang members.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, who arrived at the scene several hours after the shooting, expressed doubt that the incident was prompted by the recent massacre in Littleton, Colo.

“Clearly, before Colorado, and clearly, before this, there has been way too much violence, and a lot of the people who perpetrated it are juveniles,” Parks said.

Officers said that the sequence of events Tuesday was not certain, but that the shootings apparently began sometime after the 17-year-old and 10-year-old left for school.

Dickerson, who lives across the street from the well-maintained, four-story apartment building where the shootings took place, said she heard “a little bit of screaming” about 8 a.m. but did not give it any thought at the time.

“I thought it was just kids playing,” she said later.

Dickerson said she did not hear gunshots.

It was not immediately clear why the two siblings returned home from school about an hour later.

“They are very, very distraught,” said Cmdr. David Kalish, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department. He said the shaken survivors were taken to a nearby police station to be interviewed and counseled.

Police said the 17-year-old had come here recently from Guatemala, which is believed to be the native land of the assailant. Kalish said their mother, who at one time lived here, returned to Guatemala several years ago.

The suspect’s half sister has been placed with relatives who live nearby, authorities said. The older brother was placed with the Department of Children and Family Services.

*

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.