Neighborhood Activists Rally for End to Gang Violence

Some 40 community activists and residents marched along Orion Avenue on Thursday calling for an end to the gang violence that has plagued their neighborhood.

The protest was organized by two Neighborhood Watch groups in the wake of a shootout between rival gangs on Presidents Day that left one man dead and another seriously injured, police said.

“We want to stop the violence in the neighborhood. We want everyone to get along; that is our hope,” said Eli Quinonez, police/community representative for 17A99 Neighborhood Watch, which sponsored the event along with Familia Unida.

Carrying placards that read “Together we can prevent violence” and chanting “Peace, no violence” in Spanish, the protesters began their march at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church at Langdon Avenue and Nordhoff Street.

The group of mostly women and children then turned down Orion Avenue and stopped in front of an apartment building where Joe Martinez, 22, of Canoga Park, was killed Monday about 1:30 a.m. after a fistfight with rival gang members escalated into a shooting, police said.

In front of a makeshift shrine of candles, notes, flowers and rosary beads, the marchers listened as two women took turns praying aloud in Spanish pleading for an end to the violence, and for unity and peace.

From there, the group walked another block before stopping at a second apartment building where gang member Salvador Saldana, 23, was fatally shot last August.

Saldana was featured in a 1997 Times series that depicted life on Orion Avenue.

“I feel good knowing that people came to say they care,” said Saldana’s mother, Brenda Martinez of Sun Valley.

Martinez said more jobs and after-school programs are needed in the area to prevent young men from succumbing to the lure of gangs.

“They need to put something here for the kids to be involved with and to make them feel important and part of the community,” she said. “Because they live here in poverty they feel left out.”

Saldana is survived by his wife, Lorena Perez, 23, and two young children.

“It’s hard. I just have to keep going for my kids,” Perez said as she watched the protesters chanting in front of the apartment building where her husband was slain. She no longer lives on Orion Avenue.

Martinez said her 4-year-old grandson often asks for his father. “We tell him that Jesus wanted him and that he is an angel in heaven. He wants to be an angel to go with his dad.”

Capt. Joseph Curreri of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division walked alongside the protesters to show his support.

“There is quite a bit of narcotic activity in this area, [and] one specific gang, the Langdon Avenue gang, controls this area,” he said. “We are trying to help the good citizens of this neighborhood to have a good place to live in.”