Wednesday, Sep. 19, 2007

In The Line Of Fire: Gang members killing innocent people

Eric Adorno was mistaken for a gang member because he wore a red football jersey.

Lacy Ferguson was shot to death after she and her boyfriend bought a pack of cigarettes.

Josue Huerta was winning his battle with cancer but lost his life to gang violence.

Ernestina "Tina" Tizoc was sitting at a picnic table when her maroon blouse caught the eye of neighborhood boys who favor blue.

And Manuel Rayas was shot, sniper-style, as he stood on the lawn at a birthday party while children jumped in an inflatable bounce house nearby.

All were killed in the never- ending turf wars waged by Norteños and Sureños in the Modesto area, but none belonged to a gang or provoked their attackers.

Innocent victims such as Adorno, Ferguson, Huerta, Tizoc and Rayas are in the minority, because most gang violence involves turf battles and personal vendettas in which one gang attacks another, prompting a cycle of retaliation.

But their deaths are proof that one need not engage in a risky lifestyle to be a victim of a gang crime. And when cases such as theirs end with guilty verdicts in Stanislaus County Superior Court, it is clear that the young men who pulled the trigger cut their own lives short, too.

Many times, the defendants are minors who are charged as adults. They sport tattoos to show that they claim red or blue but rarely have fancy cars or fistfuls of cash, even if they stole cars or sold drugs regularly.

Most of them lived with mom and dad when the police hauled them off to jail.

Those convicted are sent to prison to do hard time or even life behind bars while their peers earn diplomas, get jobs and build families.

Meanwhile, victims' families cope with a hole in their lives that cannot be filled.

Natosha Adorno learned about this sad world when her husband was shot and killed by Sureño gang members who mistakenly believed Eric Adorno was a Norteño.

She watched every day of a 10-week trial that ended in June and felt that she finally could start to move on when a jury said two Modesto men were guilty of first-degree murder.

She can't understand why the gang members would kill a family man who would share a beer with just about anybody. But she watched a grandmother weep in anguish, and noticed that the other defendant didn't have a single sup- porter during the trial.

So she remained introspective when the two men received life sentences in July, telling them she knows they would do things differently if they could get another chance.

The mother of three hopes her husband's death serves as an example to other young people who are drawn to the gang lifestyle.

"A gang is not a family," Natosha Adorno said. "You're going to prison on your own."

Gangs are ruled by macho madness and vary in their degree or organization.

Detectives like Rich Delgado of the Modesto police say about 4,000 documented gang members in Stanislaus County control the local drug trade and are influenced by their elders in prison, who give marching orders to parolees so they can tax the profits of criminal activity.

To the authorities, the purpose of a gang is to further criminal activity, with its soldiers doing drive-by shootings to gain status or control turf or settle a score with a rival.

They say all of this is fueled by movies and music that glamorize the party lifestyle while ignoring the crippling effects of violence. Youngsters pick a color because they know they will have to choose a side when they end up behind bars.

"I talk to gang members as young as 12, 13, 14, 15 years old who flat out say to me, 'I know I'm going to prison,' " Delgado said.