Authorities in Los Angeles County said a respected part of the Mexican Mafia was hurt in a shooting that resulted in the death of a subsequent man on Saturday.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded to a Veterans of Foreign Wars house on Valley View Avenue in La Mirada at 11 p.m., according to Lt. De Jong.
Eric Ortiz, 34, died from bullet wounds to the neck, De Jong said. The surviving sufferer, who was still in critical condition, was not named by the colonel. A law enforcement source who was n’t authorized to speak publicly identified him as , Juan Garcia, a Mexican Mafia member known as” Topo”.
De Jong claimed that a group of non-veterans who were crew members had rented the VFW house for some sort of gathering. By the time authorities arrived, the majority of the guests had already left, and De Jong claimed that his detectives had” no suspect information anymore.”
Initially from , the Florencia-13 group, Garcia, 63, served more than 17 years in federal prison for extortion. In 2003, he was found guilty of inciting a riot at the Lompoc jail.
According to a law enforcement document that The Times reviewed, prisoners brewed a sample of the illegal alcohol known as pruno. When Garcia stepped in front of him, a lieutenant was taking an inmate for a breath breath breath test.
” You are not taking anybody”, he told the colonel, then shoved him. Garcia addressed the other prisoners in the package, which was later translated into an order to abuse the guards, saying,” Den les en la madre.”
Eight individuals attacked the colonel, punching, kicking and choking him, the statement says. Garcia demanded that one of the officers regret to him as he and about 40 different team members attempted to escape the cell.
The official hesitated. He was punched in the face by an criminal. ” I’m sorry”, he told Garcia, who let then let the staff leave, according to the report. According to the report, they were taken by a Muslim chaplain who had been incapacitated and an unarmed food service contractor.
The cell emptied of prison authorities, Garcia broke all the cup in the package and sprayed a fire extinguisher, the statement says. With the help of other individuals, he barricaded the doorway with washing and vending machines, then proceeded to crush all of the screens, radiation, sprinkler systems and snow machines. According to the report, other prisoners also beat a prisoner who did n’t participate in the melee.
The associate governor issued riot gear and faces to the soldiers, who quelled the mob with rip gas, pepper spray, and “flash shock” and “multi fire” bombs, the report says. Twenty-eight team members and four residents, including Garcia, suffered injury ranging from cuts and bruises to a rupture and severe head pain.
An analyst wrote in the record that inmate Garcia” showed some leadership.”
Garcia was given a further six years in prison in addition to his criminal sentence after pleading innocent to the violence at a national service in 2005.
A parole report found that Los Angeles Police Department officials were on 64th Street in South L.A. when they noticed a gold Volkswagen Passat double-parked on the wrong side of the street one year after his release in 2020.
They saw the pilot, Garcia, hand a gun to a person standing next to the vehicle, the report says. The gentleman took off running. When the officers caught up to him, the 31-year-old part of Florencia-13 seemed “afraid to answer my questions and denied knowing Garcia”, the arresting officer wrote in a statement.
Convicted of possessing a firearm as a murderer, Garcia was sent up to national prison in 2022 to provide 15 months. Before he was sentenced, Steve Quinonez, chief executive of the Florence Firestone Community Organization, wrote in a letter to the judge that Garcia volunteered for his team.
A “great head with a large spirit”, Garcia mentored young citizens not to get” the wrong path in life”, he wrote.
De Jong, the sheriff’s lieutenant, asked that anyone with information about Saturday’s shooting contact detectives at ( 323 ) 890-5500.
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