Canoga Park Teen Is Fatally Shot

Trying to escape gunfire, an 18-year-old Canoga Park man crawled under a dilapidated blue van parked in a carport early Friday morning to hide. There, he was fatally shot.

Police believe Edwin Rodriguez who turned 18 two weeks ago, may be the latest casualty in the San Fernando Valley’s gang warfare, which has claimed at least a dozen lives this year.

Although police do not believe Rodriguez was affiliated with a street gang, the killers may be gang members, they said.

“We have had pockets of problems over there,” said Det. Andrew Purdy of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division. “But we don’t know if it was retaliation for anything.”

Rodriguez was shot about 2:30 a.m. as he was talking with friends outside an apartment complex on the corner of Variel Avenue and Wyandotte Street.

A brown car with tinted rear windows drove toward the building’s carport, and someone fired several times at Rodriguez and Jesse Munoz, 26, police said. Rodriguez was struck once in the chest.

“He never hangs out right here,” said one of Rodriguez’s friends, who asked not to be identified. “The one night he does, look what happens.”

Munoz, who was chased by assailants in the car as he ran down the street, was shot in the back, police said.

He was treated at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and released.

Friends and family placed colorful prayer candles Friday at the spot where Rodriguez was killed.

A Polaroid picture of him was taped to the van, which was spotted with black dust used by investigators to lift fingerprints.

Standing beneath a flowering crape myrtle tree, residents who heard the shots said they could not believe what happened.

“I heard seven to eight shots, but they weren’t one after the other,” said another unidentified friend.

“There were pauses. There weren’t any bullets found here. Between Edwin and [Munoz], they got it all.”

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Rodriguez attended Owensmouth High School in Canoga Park, where he was known as a joker with a knack for making people laugh. Now, there are only tears for a friend whose death remains unsolved.

“He was such a nice guy,” said a neighbor.

“He was outgoing and always cared about people. He didn’t deserve to die this way.”

There have been a spate of gang-related slayings in the Valley in recent weeks, police said.

Three people were killed last month in Panorama City, and police believe the shootings were linked to a rivalry between two black gangs.

In the West Valley, where Rodriguez was killed, there have been three gang-related killings and all the victims were Latinos, police said.