Stray Bullet Killed Boy, 9

A 9-year-old boy killed while celebrating Independence Day in Buena Park died from a stray bullet shot into the air, police said Monday.

Xavier Morales of Anaheim was struck by a .22- or .25-caliber bullet found about nine feet from where he was standing watching fireworks on the Fourth of July at Boisseranc Park on Dale Street, Buena Park Police Sgt. Rich Pena said.

A third search of the park over the weekend turned up a bullet from a small-caliber handgun, prompting police to label the incident a homicide, Pena said.

Police said three vehicles parked nearby were also hit by gunfire. A woman sitting in one of them told authorities that a bullet narrowly missed her.

Xavier was with his 17-year-old brother, Arturo, two cousins and Arturo’s girlfriend at a neighborhood Fourth of July celebration when he collapsed shortly after, telling his brother that he wasn’t feeling well.

“I thought he’s just tired, then he started yelling that his stomach hurt,” Arturo Morales said Monday, clutching a picture of his brother in a baseball uniform. “I thought it was just food poisoning or something.”

The younger Morales walked toward the entrance of the park, where he collapsed, said Buena Park Police Det. Shawn Morgan. When his brother tried to help him up, the boy vomited, then he fell unconscious, Morgan said.

Arturo Morales called police after spotting blood on his brother’s right side.

Xavier, who would have started fifth grade in August at Sunkist Elementary School, died Saturday at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Police and coroner’s officials said the bullet plummeted downward through the boy’s right side, puncturing a lung and severing the aorta before exiting near his hip.

Family and friends gathered at the boy’s home on Billie Jo Circle on Monday to mourn their loss.

“He was very healthy and very loving,” said his mother, Vicky Morales, adding that he had wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up. “He was the happiness of this house. Instead of us being here for him, he was always here for us. He was just a great kid.”

Police said the bullet that struck Xavier could have been fired from as far as a mile away from the park.

Pamela Goodrich, 49, of Garden Grove was sitting in her Toyota Tacoma truck preparing to leave the park when a bullet hit the passenger’s window and whizzed past her.

“All the glass blew up in my face,” she said. “The police told me it was fireworks until we found bullet fragments inside the car.”

Police said the bullet that almost hit Goodrich was from a small-caliber handgun.

Officers are investigating whether it came from the same gun that killed Xavier.

The boy’s death was the first Independence Day fatal shooting in Buena Park in at least 25 years, Pena said. Another 9-year-old boy was killed in Los Angeles on July 4, 1999, when a stray bullet struck him in the head while he was playing with friends on the front porch during a family gathering.

Law enforcement officials said they have tried to curb such gunplay by educating the public on the dangers of firing guns in the air, a popular antic during Fourth of July and New Year’s celebrations.

“For a lot of people it goes through one ear and out the other or they just don’t understand it,” said Deputy Bill Spear, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “By the time the bullet comes down through people’s roofs, homes or cars, innocent people are injured or killed unnecessarily. The word is: Don’t do it.”

Law enforcement officials ran television commercials in English, Spanish and Vietnamese before the holiday to remind the public not to shoot guns into the air. Buena Park police passed out fliers to residents, and Anaheim officers have staged community forums.

“We’ve done as much as we could and we don’t know what it’s going to take for people to understand,” Pena said.

Funeral services for Xavier will be at 3 p.m. Thursday at Forest Lawn, 4471 Lincoln Ave., Cypress.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call police at (714) 920-1120.