East L.A. Hit-and-Run Accident Takes Life of ‘the Soul of Our Home’

It was a warm afternoon, and Rafael Medina headed down to the corner store to get his mother a mango paleta. The popsicle was just the type of gesture his East L.A. family came to expect from the 7-year-old boy, who would regularly wake up early, with a big smile, to cook waffles for his parents’ breakfast.

“Be careful, papito,” Dina Medina warned Rafael as he bounded out on Friday.

“Don’t worry, mammy,” he replied, and soon came back safely to help his sister clean his room. He diligently vacuumed under his bed and proudly showed the work to his mother.

Impressed, Dina finished her paleta and took a rest on the bed, thinking her baby was watching movies or playing in his room.

But Rafael had gone out with his 11-year-old sister to play at the nearby school. As they crossed a street at a crosswalk, he was hit by a man riding a motorcycle, who tore through the stop sign at about 50 mph, according to witnesses and investigators.

Dina Medina soon heard a knock on the door and then stepped outside. Down the street, she saw a group of people, including police officers.

A sense of dread rushed over her. A neighbor grabbed her and said that Rafael had been hit. He never leaves without permission, she thought. But there he was, his body lying on the ground.

“I wanted to hug him, but the police wouldn’t let me touch him,” she said.

The driver struck the boy at full speed, authorities said.

Paramedics put Rafael into an ambulance and carried him to the hospital. While they did CPR to revive him, Dina rubbed his feet. But the boy never woke up.

“He was the soul of our home,” said Dina Medina. His father, Mario Medina, worked overtime so Dina could be with him at home and make sure he was safe. Rafael had just received an achievement award from his second-grade teacher.

“Everything I see in the house, everything I do, reminds me of him,” he said. “In the kitchen. . . . He used to love cooking. He’d make us all cupcakes.”

After the incident, investigators canvassed the area and got some leads. They homed in on a suspect, who lived in East L.A., and got a search warrant. Even before they could conduct the search Sunday morning, the suspect’s girlfriend, Veronica Polanco, who allegedly was riding on the back of the bike, turned herself in to the East L.A. sheriff’s station.

“She was feeling guilty,” said Officer Louis Gutierrez.

At 7 a.m. Sunday, officers entered the East L.A. home of Jose Maciel, 31, and arrested him. Both he and Polanco were booked on suspicion of second-degree murder.

Meanwhile, Dina Medina can’t get a conversation with Rafael out of her head.

“How much do you love me, papito?” she had asked him recently.

He smiled ear to ear and said: “I love you more than all the chocolate and all the candy in the world.”