Man Held in Pregnant Teen’s Death

Capping an intense investigation, Costa Mesa police arrested an 18-year-old gang member Tuesday in connection with the slayings of a teenage girl and the 7-month fetus she was carrying.

Police credit the $25,000 reward offered by the Costa Mesa City Council with prompting witnesses to come forward and provide key details that helped investigators identify the suspect.

The arrest comes six weeks after a gunman walked up a driveway on Wallace Avenue and fired blindly through the door into a garage-turned-apartment. Yuridia “Judy” Balbuena, 15, was shot once in the chest as her father, mother, three siblings and fiance looked on in horror.

Police investigators Tuesday identified the suspect as Eduardo Yepez Guerrero of Santa Ana. They said that Guerrero intended to kill Yuridia’s brother Armando, 18, or her fiance, Omar Garcia, 19, alleged members of a rival gang.

Guerrero was reportedly upset on the day of the shooting because someone had tagged the neighborhood with the emblem of a rival gang the night before, Costa Mesa Police Lt. Ron Smith said. Also, someone had taken a stolen car and rammed it into one owned by his cousin, a member of the same gang.

Police allege that Guerrero slipped out of a wedding reception he was attending nearby, carrying a .357 blue-steeled ruger handgun to the Balbuena apartment intending to settle the score.

Instead, Yuridia’s life was cut short. The girl with long, dark hair, who friends said was so excited at the prospect of motherhood, bled to death.

Doctors at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach performed an emergency caesarean section, hoping to save her unborn child, but the infant died the following day.

The investigation, which at times involved all 25 detectives in the Costa Mesa Police Department, initially proved fruitless. But on June 21, the City Council announced the reward. Two days later, investigators hit the streets again, returning to the same nearby neighborhoods they already had canvassed twice before. This time, the promise of a monetary reward proved to be the difference.

“It wasn’t until the reward that people actually came out and said the guy you are looking for is Eduardo Guerrero,” Smith said. “It was up to us afterward to prove it.”

Officers discovered that Guerrero was being held in Orange County Jail after being picked up on suspicion of an unrelated probation violation.

After questioning Guerrero and examining the physical evidence--including the recovered murder weapon--police decided to book Guerrero on two counts of homicide, Smith said.

Guerrero is scheduled to be arraigned today.

Meanwhile, emotions in the neighborhood have calmed considerably since the shooting.

The garage-turned-apartment where the killing took place has been converted back into a storage area, after the property owner was cited for building code violations.

Prior to the shooting, the Balbuenas slept, ate and watched TV in the 12-by-20-foot space behind a windowless, one-car garage door made from cheap plywood. They paid $100 a month in rent.

The three bullet holes remain, still labeled by Costa Mesa police stickers, one partially hidden by a couch pushed against the garage door. Children playing with squirt guns squirt water through the holes and peek through them, oblivious to the tragedy that took place there.

Still, those close to Yuridia continue to grieve.

Members of Yuridia’s family, who traveled to Mexico to bury her, have been unable to return to the United States because of immigration problems, according to a longtime family friend.

Naticia Balbuena, 22, Yuridia’s sister who stayed in Mexico when the family moved to California in 1991, said her family has regained some strength and closure from news of the arrest. But they are still in pain.

“We’re still hurting,” she said during a phone interview. “It’s hard for me to talk about this.”

Yuridia’s fiance, Omar Garcia, says he still dreams of his girlfriend.

“Every day she’s in my dreams,” said Garcia, who now lives in Santa Ana. “I dream about her like nothing ever happened. She’s with me. We’re living together. She’s still pregnant.”