Slaying of 2 Teens Ends Streak in Huntington

Two teenage boys who reportedly belonged to a local street gang were fatally shot early Saturday in the Oak View section of Huntington Beach, the first slayings in the city in nearly 2 1/2 years.

Heriberto Tapia Vasquez, 16, and his close friend, Oscar Gaytan, 18, were shot as they walked though the intersection of Wagon Drive and Nichols Street about 12:50 a.m., police and relatives said.

Gaytan fell where he was shot, but Vasquez managed to run a block east. He collapsed on the steps of an apartment complex where an older sister lived, friends and relatives said.

One of Vasquez’s brothers was at the sister’s apartment and saw his sibling collapse with a bullet wound in his back, relatives said. The brother cradled Vasquez on the concrete steps as the teen died, said the victim’s sister, Beatriz Vasquez. “My brother had him in his arms, saying, ‘Don’t leave us.’ He was struggling to breathe,” said Beatriz, 15.

While friends and relatives of the victims said they suspected rival gang members, police said they had not identified any suspects and were unsure about a motive.

The killings were the first in Huntington Beach since Nov. 27, 1999, when Bridgette Ballas, a 29-year-old Calvin Klein account executive, was found raped and bludgeoned to death. A neighbor of Ballas’ is awaiting trial in the case.

Saturday’s shooting took place in one of the city’s poorest and most crime-plagued neighborhoods, an area of tightly packed apartments near Beach Boulevard and Slater Avenue. Police have tried for years to curb gang violence in Oak View, but relations between police and residents have at times grown tense.

About 100 neighbors and relatives of the slain teens laid candles and flowers at the site of the shooting Saturday afternoon.

Friends and relatives said Vasquez and Gaytan belonged to the South Side gang. Both had had run-ins with authorities, they said.

Relatives described Gaytan as a loving father of a 1-year-old boy and said he had been looking for a job since being released from Juvenile Hall a month ago.

“He said he was going to change,” said a younger brother, Danny Gaytan, 14.

Vasquez’s family recalled the boy as a soccer-loving teen with a fondness for action movies.

“He wasn’t a troublemaker,” his mother, Guadalupe Vasquez, said in Spanish. “I don’t want the police to forget about this. I want the police to find his killers.”