Baby’s slaying in Watts spurs $100,000 reward offer

The 1-year-old was shot while in the arms of his father, who may have been mistaken for a gang member because of the color he was wearing. Police Chief Charlie Beck calls the death ‘an awful tragedy.’

By Sam Quinones, Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

8:54 PM PDT, June 5, 2012

The slaying of a 1-year-old Watts boy who was shot and killed while cradled in his father’s arms brought an impassioned call for the public’s help Tuesday as authorities and a major local corporation offered $100,000 for information leading to the shooter’s capture.

The killing of Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava follows a period of violence between two warring gangs, and Los Angeles Police Department detectives say the slaying appears to be related. Although the victim’s father was not a gang member, he may have been mistaken for one because he was wearing a purple T-shirt, witnesses and area residents said.

On Tuesday, Police Chief Charlie Beck called the boy’s death “an awful tragedy.”

“Gang violence touches everybody,” Beck said. “People have to understand that even though gangs may target each other, victims cross a wide, broad swath.”

The shooting occurred about 7:50 p.m. Monday on the sidewalk near 105th and Hickory streets. The victim’s father, Mauro Cortez, had just donned a purple T-shirt a friend had given him.

“I own a Honda,” the shirt said. “Be nice to me.” But as Cortez’s extended family congregated outside the home, his stepfather and stepbrothers urged the 21-year-old construction worker to remove the shirt, witnesses said. Purple had become a dangerous color since last summer, when the area experienced a number of shootings involving a black gang known as Fudgetown and a rival Latino gang, called Barrio Grape Street, which uses the color purple.

An immigrant from rural Mexico, Cortez “didn’t know nothing about people killing each other over the color purple,” said Luis Ramos, a friend. “He barely speaks English.”

Witnesses say Cortez was still wearing the shirt and holding his son when a black youth in a dark hoodie rode up to the group on a bicycle, fired a gun into the crowd and pedaled off. The bullet pierced the toddler’s back and struck Cortez in the upper body. The boy died later that night at a hospital after emergency surgery, according to authorities.

On Tuesday, a memorial to “Maurito” stood outside the family’s home. A cardboard placard listed his date of birth — April 1, 2011 — and death, along with photos of him as a newborn and as a toddler atop a rocking horse.

At an afternoon news conference, Mauro Cortez spoke briefly to reporters in Spanish, then left the podium in tears.

Deputy Police Chief Pat Gannon held a photo of the child, whom he called “this beautiful little Angel,” and said the city was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the killer’s capture. Hours later, Timothy Leiweke, president of AEG, which owns the Los Angeles Kings, offered an additional $50,000.

Friends and family said Cortez is an immigrant from the Mexican state of Jalisco who does odd jobs. He showed up looking lost three years ago and the Cervantes family took him in, said Sara Cervantes, the family matriarch.

Since then, he has lived with the Cervanteses. He later got married, and in April 2011 he and his wife had their first child — Angel.

Maria Trujillo, another member of the extended family, said: “He was always here playing with the baby. The baby was his life.

“With these shootings going on, you don’t feel safe in your own frontyard,” she added.

The neighborhood is a street of small, stucco one-story houses a few blocks east of the Watts Towers. Until Monday night, Hickory Street, though parallel to Grape Street one block to the west, had been untouched by the gang war.

Resident Miguel Medina, an unemployed construction worker from Mexico, has lived on the street for five years. “It’s the gangs,” he said. “When I came here it was calm, but then they began killing each other.”

Ramos, a longtime area resident, said many Fudgetown members have moved to San Bernardino, but from there have become virtually a commuter gang, returning often to Watts to war with Barrio Grape Street.

Capt. Phil Tingirides said the recent problems between the two gangs date to last year.

“It was quite a summer,” he said. “We had shootings constantly from late April to the beginning of September.” The arrest of two Fudgetown members living in San Bernardino in September had seemed to put an abrupt end to the violence, he said.

The men were recently ordered to stand trial for murder, and police investigators speculated that Monday’s shooting may have been spurred by the gang’s anger over the capture and prosecution of their members.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to contact LAPD gang homicide detectives at (213) 485-4175

Source: L.A. Times