2-18-05

Death In The Afternoon
Boy 15, Slain on Ash Wednesday, Cut Down in Trio’s Crossfire
By Arthur R. Vinsel, Community News Reporter

     A female LAPD officer strode about authoritatively—her forehead marked with a cross smeared in ash by a priest in observance of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and a period of introspection and atonement for sins and wrongs. City Hall Market clerk, Rick Perez sat disconsolately on the curb near the body of Vincent Villa as paramedics worked. Perez has several children of his own, including a son the same age as the slain teenager.
     “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Perez had cried to Vincent, trying to revive him as an ambulance rolled up, its siren also dying.
     “It had to be me…,” Perez muttered later, wishing someone else had first reached the wounded youngster, who leaves his parents, Frank and Brenda Villa and six brothers and sisters. They live three blocks away and moved to San Pedro last year from Apple Valley.
     Brenda, a stay-at-home Mom, and Frank, a worker at an oil refinery, said Vincent had just left their house as his mother was helping another child with a school project.
     “I’m going to 11th Street with my friends,” he told her.
     “Someone called about 15 minutes later and said there was a lot of shooting down on 11th Street and a boy was hit,” she recalled at a Thursday afternoon neighborhood outrage and protest rally, attended by City Councilwoman Janice Hahn and her staff and LAPD Harbor Division Commander Capt. Pat Gannon with other ranking officers.
     “I said, ‘My son just went down to 11th Street! I knew. I knew then,” said Mrs. Villa, hollow-eyed with weary sorrow as her mourning children knelt on the gritty pavement before a small shrine to their slain brother. “I cried all the way down here. I already knew. Then, I saw his clothes in the street where the paramedics cut them off.”
     “A mother knows….a mother knows…,” murmured Councilwoman Hahn, who had brought a vivid bouquet of flowers to place on the memorial that grew over five days to include nearly 100 flickering prayer candles and other mementos. Friends covered it with a green canvas sunshade against the Friday and Saturday rains and people continued coming, to pause and leave remembrances: a prayer card; Starburst candy, two broken skateboards, a bottle of sweet wine, nacho cheese flavored Doritos, coins, combs, pens and letters on lined notebook paper.
     During the aftermath of the shooting, the police took her aside at the scene, but she rebuffed their questions.
     “I said, (she told Councilwoman Hahn) ‘Pardon my French,’ But while I’m bullshitting with you people, my son is going to die without me. Am I under arrest?” They let her go to him.
     Young Vincent was pronounced dead on arrival at Little Company of Mary San Pedro Hospital, but witnesses said it appeared he succumbed within moments of being shot down in the street.
     “I checked his wrist, but there was no pulse,” said John Ceniseros, a longtime resident of 11th Street. His brother Steve Ceniseros, who lives across the street is spearheading a safer neighborhood organizing committee.
     Roughly 80 people attended the street corner gathering. Young men with hot, angry eyes and woeful girls including Vincent’s sister, Gina, who lamented: ‘I want my brother back. I want my brother back.”
     “We’ve got to stop the killing, Capt. Gannon,” Councilwoman Hahn cried out. “We’ve got to stop the killing. I just went to the funeral of Michael Gutierrez,” she said of the 23-year-old fitness trainer, murdered while trying to quell a fight at a party that drew gang members.
     “I can’t take any more of these,” she sighed as the crowd began dispersing, although five days later, people continued to come one by one or in groups paying respects to the San Pedro High School freshman and his loved ones.
     Targeted was a group of six black and Hispanic male youths standing on the corner, authorities say. Villa came out of the City Hall Market and joined them. The gunmen were in position near the historic Sam’s Alhambra bar in the same structure. Villa was shot three times in the torso.
     “He’d just walked out,” said clerk Juan Cortez. “I hit the floor behind the counter. The shots were so close I knew they could come right through the wall. The first two were really large caliber. ”
     One of the young men drew a gun and returned fire, police said. But the two suspects who initiated the shooting escaped.
     Pandemonium reigned as police sealed the area and located witnesses, fearing others may have been wounded and fled to their homes in shock, unaware they needed treatment.
     One youth, reportedly grazed by a bullet, was arrested along with a companion after plainclothes police officers nearby caught them two blocks away and confiscated a handgun. One was arrested on a misdemeanor charges of illegal possession of a handgun in public. The other was released after questioning.
     Police say they have interviewed more than a dozen individuals on circumstances and potential motives including gang membership or association, while LAPD Harbor Division Commander Capt. Gannon said the tragedy appears drug-related. There was no evidence suggesting the gunmen specifically aimed for Villa.
     The neighborhood of older family homes and apartment units was cordoned off until nearly midnight as officers with dogs and shotguns sought the vanished gunmen, collecting evidence in a two square-block area, including shell casings, spent slugs and a black athletic shoe.
     The gunmen, described as two older Hispanic men wearing bandanna masks—escaped on foot, apparently ditching their guns one block away on 10th Street, then barricading themselves momentarily in a ladies’ restroom in the old Royal Hotel’s tiny bar as the stunned patrons watched. They smashed a bathroom window and apparently escaped over fences to an alley.
     Police searched yards with flashlights as a generator-fed floodlight illuminated the murder scene a block west, but it was not until the following morning that the two handguns were found ditched in a plastic trash bin by the hotel.
     “One of the guys upstairs happened to look out his window and there they were in that hamper,” said Pearl Rizzo Robbins, 74, former owner of the hotel and an 11th Street resident for 41 years.
     “My kids keep saying: ‘Ma, Ma, you’ve got to get out of there.’ Well, where am I gonna go?,” says the peppery Rizzo, renowned in her day for running the Royal like the Ritz-Carlton, requiring identification of all visitors seeking guests. “Well, first of all I’m gonna go visit a girlfriend up north.”
     Bullets blew out windows and one tire of a parked new Ford Mustang convertible. Bullets also struck buildings including the venerable market and New Hope Courtyard Garden Apartments, a half block away. One unit’s window was broken while two shots hit the elevator shaft, 25 feet up.
     Detectives aided by a fire department ladder truck were there Monday trying to recover slugs from the wood frame and plaster structure.
     Villa had hoped to become a wide-receiver for San Pedro High School’s football team next fall. Investigators are still seeking leads on the gunmen while apprehension, fear and anger fill this neighborhood as residents mourn.

Councilwoman Hahn embraces the mother of Vincent Villa a day after he was slain on February 10.  Neighbors, community leaders, and members of the LAPD Harbor Division joined the Councilwoman in a Stop the Violence rally.  Photo courtesy of Councilwoman Janice Hahn’s office.