Man Kills Intruder, Is Slain

Still feeling humiliated from a home robbery three weeks earlier, Francisco Lopez decided to fight back when three gunmen woke him late Tuesday and ordered him and his grandchildren to the floor.

At 69, Lopez was a proud man who had raised eight children at the Cudahy house he bought 25 years ago with the income he earned cleaning county hospitals.

As the gunmen searched for jewelry and money, something inside Lopez snapped, authorities said. Lopez feigned illness and was allowed to retrieve some medicine from his bedroom, where he kept a handgun. Accompanied by two of the intruders, he grabbed his gun and started firing.

“No one is ever going to rob me again!” family members heard Lopez shout in Spanish, as the shots were fired.

An unidentified 25-year-old man was killed and Lopez was hit with 19 bullets from one or both of the other gunmen, who escaped with a fourth man in a black Thunderbird, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brenda Cambra said. Detectives would not give any more details of their investigation.

Lopez lay wounded inside his home for several minutes, saying goodbye to his family before paramedics arrived. He died an hour later.

“He was a brave man,” said a grandson, Raul Pacheco, 14. “He probably saved us.”

Lopez was described as a reserved but tender Mexican immigrant who enjoyed his 22 grandchildren. He often hosted family barbecues and took trips with his wife, Teresa, to Baja California.

While family members mourned Lopez’s death Wednesday, some said they wished he had gone along with the robbers. “Maybe nothing would have happened,” said his eldest daughter, Irma Lopez, 42. “They probably would have just left.”

That was what happened in the earlier robbery at the Lopez home, which is on a residential stretch of Walnut Street, which is full of single-family homes and frontyard gardens.

Three weeks ago, two gunmen entered the home through the garage, which has been converted into a family room.

Lopez also was asleep at that time--until he was pummeled awake by robbers.

“They hit him several times with a broomstick and forced him to come out here in his underwear,” Irma Lopez said. “My mother was screaming: ‘My husband is sick! You’re hurting him!’ ”

In that incident, the two men left after taking a few pieces of jewelry from family members.

Although no one was hurt, Raul said, Lopez seemed to be fuming inside. Raul recalled that his grandfather said: “They’re not going to rob me ever again. I’m fed up.”

Once a strong and wiry man, Lopez had in recent years become more conscious of his own physical vulnerability, his family said. He bought a handgun a few years ago, said Blanca Lopez, 32, another daughter.

“He’d carry it around whenever he went out,” she said. “He would say: ‘I need it to protect myself because I’m getting old now.’ ”

When the three robbers burst into the Lopez home Tuesday night, Raul and some cousins were playing inside the garage with a new family puppy.

Fighting back tears, Raul said: “They pointed a gun to my head,” a horrifying repeat of the earlier robbery.

The men ordered the grandchildren to lie on the floor, then rounded up the rest of the family inside the house.

When they got to Lopez, the men shook him awake and forced him into the garage, dressed in his underwear.

With the rest of the family pleading for their lives and swearing there was nothing in the home worth taking, Lopez made his exit.

“I think he knew he was going to die,” Raul said. “He had had it.”

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call homicide detectives at (323) 890-5500.