Girl Shot to Death at Garage Dwelling

A gunman strode up a driveway and fired blindly through the door of a garage-turned-apartment in Costa Mesa, killing a 15-year-old girl and the fetus she had carried for seven months, police said Sunday.

Yuridia “Judy” Balbuena was hit once in her upper left chest about 9 p.m. Saturday, said Lt. Ron Smith of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

“Papa, Papa,” she cried before collapsing to the floor of the garage.

Her parents, boyfriend and three siblings, who were gathered for dinner, watched as blood soaked her white T-shirt and black corduroy overall shorts. For a split second, her family thought the girl had begun labor prematurely, Smith said.

Neighbors in the 2000 block of Wallace Avenue saw a medium-built man in his teens or 20s run from the driveway through a field filled with weeds and trash before scrambling over a chain-link fence to the playground of Pomona Elementary School.

Police did not have a suspect in the shooting, and they were searching for a motive, Smith said. Police think the crime--which they are calling a double homicide--may be gang-related.

“It’s not random,” Smith said. “It didn’t just happen. Someone picked out this garage.”

Authorities originally believed a former boyfriend may have been responsible for the killing, but the young man was found to have been working at the time.

A slender girl with long, dark hair, Yuridia died Saturday night at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, police said. Doctors performed an emergency caesarean-section, hoping to save her female fetus, which lived about nine hours. Although the premature baby was spared by the small-caliber bullet that killed her mother, the infant died about 6:45 a.m. Sunday.

The teenager bled to death, according to Orange County Deputy Coroner Joseph Luckey. An autopsy for her baby is scheduled for today.

“It’s a tragedy,” Smith said. “The young girl was pregnant and she was shot down in front of her parents. It’s heart-wrenching.”

The Balbuenas lived for several months with two extended families in a two-bedroom apartment with an attached garage that had been converted into a third bedroom. The 12-by-20-foot garage housed bunk beds, two twin beds, a table with a microwave and a TV.

Three shots pocked the closed, windowless garage door, and one hit Yuridia, Smith said. The bullets missed her boyfriend, 19-year-old Omar Garcia; her parents, Micalea and Modesto; and three siblings, 18-year-old Armando, 13-year-old Sandra and 2-year-old Jennifer.

Yuridia was a reserved young woman who dropped out of Estancia High a few months ago when her pregnancy became apparent. Not long before leaving school, a neighbor said, she got into a fight with another girl.

She was excited about becoming a mother and was known for giving matchbox cars to neighborhood kids. Now those same kids are mourning her death. So are the Balbuenas.

Looking sleepless and drawn, the family returned home briefly Sunday to pick up clothing and toothbrushes. Sandra tried to speak to reporters, but her words dissolved into tears.

The deliberate nature of the shooting--aimed at a closed garage hidden from the street--makes police suspect that a gang member targeted the family, Smith said. The shooter could not see into the garage where the Balbuenas live.

“There is no gang that claims this as their territory,” Smith said. “Maybe someone is trying to claim it.”

Some neighbors fear the same thing.

Two Wallace Avenue residents, who would not give their names for fear of retaliation, said they wonder if the shooting was payback. They contend that a few days ago, someone in the Balbuena family--they wouldn’t say who--had a confrontation with gang members and may have waved a gun at them.

Their working-class neighborhood still bears the scars of a recent graffiti attack, in which someone scrawled over cars, walls and mailboxes with blue spray paint.

Apartments with tattered window screens and dingy stucco characterize the neighborhood, contrasting with the flower gardens that flourish. Despite the commotion Sunday, children tossed footballs in the street.

“It’s so sad,” said neighbor Noelio Samayoa. “People have no respect for human life anymore. They didn’t have to kill this girl before she had begun her life. It scares me, as a neighbor. Are we safe? Do we have to move?”

Yuridia’s death also has made Jose Avila’s family wonder about their neighborhood.

“We moved here about five years ago, and it was pretty quiet then,” said Jose, 16, who attended school with Yuridia. “Then two days ago, someone tagged the whole place. . . . We’re probably moving from here.”