Shooting Cleaves Community

In the Watts neighborhood where police killed a 19-month-old toddler held hostage by her gun-wielding father, neighbors have spent the week agonizing over whether the LAPD should share blame for the painful tragedy.

Many are outraged that the police didn’t do more to save Suzie Marie Pena’s life before moving in and killing her father, 35-year-old car dealer Jose Raul Pena, catching the child in the cross-fire. Others say there was little else officers could have done Sunday to end the 2 1/2 -hour standoff with Pena, who was caught on security cameras holding the child with one hand while firing on officers with the other.

Nightly street protests in front of a makeshift memorial near the shooting scene at 104th Street and Avalon Boulevard have grown so ugly, community activists have asked the public to stay away.

Fraydra Hartwell, whose 17-year-old daughter ran out of the family room crying when she heard the news, said police should have shown more restraint before endangering the toddler’s life.

“Because it was a child. Why did they have to take that child’s life?” said Hartwell, 47, who has lived in the community for 19 years. “It’s easy for me to choose a side. They could have been more responsible. They are trained professionals.”

But Tony Duncan, 49, who works at the Fish Factory, two blocks from the shooting, says the father is solely responsible for his child’s death.

“If you’re going to put your kid in jeopardy, you have disregard for anyone’s life,” said Duncan.

Police have not released details about Suzie’s death. But they said the stage was set for the shootout early Sunday when Suzie’s mother, Lorena Lopez, filed a domestic threats report against Pena with police. Pena later took his 19-month-old daughter to his car lot, where hours later police received a 911 call from Lopez’s 16-year-old daughter reporting that her stepfather was threatening her physically.

Police helped the stepdaughter escape, but continued to exchange gunfire with Pena through much of the afternoon before moving in on his makeshift office, where his body and that of his daughter were found. Police rifles killed both Suzie and her father, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office reported.

On Friday, further details of the coroner’s investigation came out. Suzie, who the coroner previously reported was killed by a single shot to the head, was also wounded “below her left knee and to her outer left calf,” said Craig Harvey, a coroner’s spokesman, reading from an investigators’ report. Harvey cautioned that the finding was preliminary, and that the two apparent leg wounds could have come from a single bullet. The report may change when the autopsy and investigation are finalized.

Suzie was found dressed in a yellow shirt, lavender skirt, lavender sandals and a diaper. Jose Pena was found behind a desk, surrounded by empty casings, an empty 9-millimeter handgun near his left hand.

Also Friday, Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Pena was an undocumented immigrant and had been deported in August 1995 after being convicted of cocaine possession. He returned to country illegally, Kice said.

The neighborhood where the pair died was once predominantly black. Now a mix of blacks and Latino immigrants live there, amid taco stands and signs in Spanish side by side with fish-fry shops, nail salons and black churches.

The shootout came a month before the 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, which erupted not far away at 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard and lasted six days, resulting in 34 deaths. Twenty-seven years later, the 1992 riots, triggered by the acquittal of four LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating, engulfed the city, and shops and grocery stores were looted.

Duncan has lived in Watts since 1963 and said he has seen police become less confrontational and more communicative with residents. The easing of tensions, however, may have given some criminals license to push confrontations with police to the limit, he said.

“Years ago a person would expect that they would get shot. Now gangbangers are getting warnings,” he said.

“People got it up in their head that the LAPD ain’t hard. He probably expected he wasn’t going to get shot because he had his baby in his hand.”

Shantail Parker, 30, said the police were just doing their job.

“People have got to understand that the police are here to protect and serve, but they have to protect themselves too. They have families too,” she said.

Several people said the officers moved more aggressively than they would have in richer neighborhoods such as Beverly Hills or Brentwood.

“I think that if they were up in Bel-Air, I don’t think it would have turned out that way,” said Shirley Allen, 47, manager of a beauty supply store. “In Bel-Air they would have tried to talk to the person more.”

At Matty’s Beauty Supply on the corner of Century and Avalon boulevards, Allen and customers questioned why the SWAT team didn’t look for alternatives to halt the standoff.

“They could have used rubber bullets,” Allen said.

Some mentioned the police killing of 13-year-old car thief suspect Devin Brown in February, and said law-enforcement violence against young people seemed to be on the upswing.

Belinda Jones, 41, a mother of three sons, said she sympathized with Suzie Pena’s mother.

“I want them to handle situations more differently in South Central. It’s getting crazy,” she said. “We know you have a job to do, but on the same token, you don’t have to be so aggressive.”

Friday evening, LAPD officials, who spent much of the week attacking Pena’s character and actions, called a special community meeting at police headquarters and emphasized that they shared the Lopez family’s grief.

“We share the pain the family is experiencing,” Asst. Chief George Gascon told a crowd of about 80 to 90 people. “This is something no one wants to see.”

Not everyone was persuaded.

Najee Ali, executive director of Project Islamic Hope, a civil rights group, called the police assault on Pena’s office “a clear case of negligence.”

“They looked at the baby as collateral damage,” Ali said.