Boy’s Death Ups Crime Crisis in San Bernardino

The trouble began just after the three Ramirez boys and their friends arrived at the local schoolyard Wednesday for a nighttime game of basketball, a rare treat made possible by the late sundown on the first day of summer.

Two teenagers walked up to the boys and issued a stock gang challenge: “Where are you from?”

Shortly afterward, 11-year-old Anthony Michael Ramirez was fatally shot, the 28th slaying victim this year in San Bernardino and the latest youngster to die in the city’s deadly surge in gang violence, authorities said.

“Does it really need to take another kid’s life to do something?” asked Michelle Ramirez, Anthony’s mother, interviewed at a relative’s home in Moreno Valley. “I want justice for my baby. It’s not going to bring him back, but it’s something for him.”

San Bernardino police have identified and mounted a search for the suspected killer of Anthony, a promising Little League pitcher who was getting ready to graduate from elementary school Tuesday.

The shooting is the latest in a recent string of homicides in the city of nearly 200,000 residents, where one in four families lives below the poverty line.

“This is a senseless act,” said Councilman Rikke Van Johnson, whose ward includes the scene of the shooting. “Young kids, playing basketball, trying to have fun. Someone comes up on them and shoots them. It’s stupid. How can you tell someone who’s lost their son that everything will be all right?”

Police said the attack was unprovoked and that there was no evidence that any of the Ramirez brothers were affiliated with gangs. Friends and neighbors vouched for the entire group of about a dozen.

The shooter also wounded one of Anthony’s brothers in the hand.

“By all accounts, the victims were two good kids playing ball on a hot summer night,” said Lt. Ernie Lemos, a San Bernardino police spokesman.

Anthony was playing pick-up basketball with his two older brothers and their friends about 8:30 p.m. at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School on Medical Center Drive, a fenced complex of brick buildings where his 13-year-old brother, Joseph, was a student.

The boys and their oldest brother, Henry, 15, had promised their mother they would be home by dark for dinner.

The school is surrounded by gang territory, and a month ago, 14-year-old Jarred Mitchell -- a friend of one of the Ramirez brothers -- was shot and killed a few blocks north in what investigators believed was a gang-related incident.

On Wednesday night, two teenagers approached the boys as they were getting ready to pick teams and asked, “Where are you from?” one member of the group said in an interview.

“We’re not from anywhere. We’re not in a gang,” Henry Ramirez Jr., 15, recalled saying.

The two intruders turned around, took a few steps and spun back toward the kids. One pulled a gun from his waistband and fired two shots, then ran backward, spraying more gunfire at the group, Henry Ramirez said.

Some in the group ran back to their neighborhood, at 15th and Magnolia streets, and pounded on doors to get help. Joseph Ramirez, 13, who was shot in the right hand, hitched a ride to his house.

Henry Ramirez picked up his brother, who had been shot in the back, and carried him to the front of the school, where a janitor reacting to the crime had unlocked a teacher’s lounge to shelter the kids. Henry called his mother and told her Anthony had been wounded with what he mistakenly thought was a pellet gun.

Michelle Ramirez and Joseph sped to the school, where she cradled her wounded son, saying: “Anthony, wake up. Mommy’s here.”

He was taken to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, where he was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m.

San Bernardino has long wrestled with violent crime. In the mid-1990s, Money magazine named it one the nation’s most dangerous places, and police sold T-shirts calling their hometown “Murder City.” The violence peaked in mid-decade, when the number of homicides topped 80 in one year.

The annual homicide count dropped to 32 by 2000 but has climbed every year since, to 58 in 2005, police said.

The victims included 11-year-old Mynesha Crenshaw, who was eating dinner in her family’s apartment one evening in November when a stray bullet from a gang-related shooting found her. That killing helped make violent crime the top issue in the mayoral race, won by former Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Morris in February.

At a news conference Thursday, Morris said Wednesday’s shooting was devastating and demonstrated why the city needed to expand his signature gang prevention program, which the city rolled out last week.

“This is urban terrorism. We’ve directed our resources nationally to foreign shores. We ought to be directing resources into our inner cities,” Morris said. “We ought to have national policies that prevent angry youth -- gang-related, drug-addicted, drug-selling youth -- from having access to weapons of destruction, handguns specifically.”

The city intends to add 14 officers this year, with plans for a total of 40 new officers by the end of 2008, though the mayor cautioned that the city would not have the budget for the entire $10-million program. His other anti-gang steps include injunctions and sweeps, and more use of technology, such as tracking of violent parolees and cameras in public places.

While supportive of the recent efforts, some community leaders said it would take a comprehensive effort by the community for the violence to subside.

“I don’t know if there’s many things we haven’t tried. It’s like wrestling an octopus,” said the Rev. Raymond Turner, a community activist and pastor at Temple Missionary Baptist Church in San Bernardino. “I think we’re going to beat it when people get sick and tired of being sick and tired of the crime.”

The Ramirez family -- Henry, Michelle and their four sons -- were described as a close-knit unit that hosted parties for neighboring kids’ birthdays and on the Fourth of July.

Anthony was a shy student at Rio Vista Elementary School who rooted for the Dodgers, pitched for the local Little League team and dreamed of playing for the Raiders, his family said.

“He was a little clown, always lovable and kissing you and hugging you, and he wasn’t embarrassed at 11 years old,” said his grandmother, Lillian Ramirez.

The family moved from Riverside five years ago to the working-class neighborhood in San Bernardino, lined with trees and kids pedaling bikes. Still, neighbors said they could often hear gunfire and many complained that police had not done enough to protect their children.

“There are shots around here all the time,” said neighbor Phillip Rojas. “I’m 38 years old, I’ve lived here all my life, and [police] haven’t been doing a damn thing.”

On Thursday, a makeshift memorial was set up in front of the Ramirez home, which included an 8-by-10-inch picture of Anthony, and a Raiders scarf and keychain. There was a teddy bear with a soccer ball patch and a tall blue candle depicting the Virgin Mary and still unlighted.

“It’s so senseless,” Anthony’s mother said. “I’m mad. He’s only 11 years old.”

On Tuesday, she plans to attend the graduation ceremony at his school and accept his diploma.