Anaheim police offer $50,000 for information on girl’s fatal shooting

It was a night like any other on West Greenacre Avenue — Melisa Martin hung laundry on the porch of her second-floor apartment, Amabeli Lopez made flan in the kitchen in the unit below, and three girls played tag in the front yard.

But the quiet turned to chaos Wednesday when the sounds of gunfire popped. Martin told her teenagers to drop to the floor. Lopez ushered her two children toward the bedroom. But for Ximena Meza, it was too late.

The 9-year-old girl rushed toward her apartment, struck by at least one bullet, collapsing into her father’s arms, Martin said.

“Help my daughter,” Martin recalled the father yelling, “she’s too young to be gone.”

Forty-five minutes later, at 7:56 p.m., Meza was pronounced dead at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.

Even in the dense urban core of Anaheim — an area that’s been marked by gangs, police shootings and angry protests from residents who say they’ve had enough — the shooting death rattled neighbors.

The family had moved there only three months prior, Martin said.

“Welcome to the neighborhood, right?” she said. “There’s no sense, no common sense at all.”

The Anaheim Police Department, which has offered a $50,000 reward, is continuing to investigate the shooting. Some witnesses told police the suspects were traveling in a light-colored vehicle, but others said they were on foot. Residents said they heard three shots.

Officers believe the shooting may have been gang-motivated but are not aware of any gang members who live in the apartment building where the shooting occurred and don’t think the girl was the intended target, Anaheim police spokesman Lt. Bob Dunn said.

With the Disney resort area to the south and the affluent Anaheim Hills to the east, the apartment building on Greenacre is in an area known as “flatlands.”

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For the record

Oct. 24, 10 a.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Disney resort was to the west of the neighborhood.

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The neighborhood where the shooting took place is said to be claimed by the local street gang CKA, according to police.

But residents said the neighborhood is a family-friendly place, not an area defined by street violence. Families frequent the neighborhood park, and kids play baseball or football at the fields on weekends.

Guillermo Valencia, 15, used to live nearby and still comes often to the park to skate.

“This park was nice and quiet and peaceful, then you hear about something like this,” he said.

The sense of random tragedy has shaken Andrea Tresvant, 27, who coaches a cheerleading squad in the park on weeknights.

Tresvant noted that they had to pay for the field lighting. The coach said she sometimes feels afraid when she goes to look for the vendor selling corn on the cob. And the smell of marijuana is not uncommon.

“It seems like Disneyland don’t care about anything that doesn’t lead to Disney,” she said. “You get here and it’s like nothing, nothing.”

But they’ve never had any problems, Tresvant said.

On Wednesday, the girls were practicing a motivational chant, their coach said. Some are the same age as Meza.

You can do it,

you can do it,

if you put your mind to it,

buckle down, buckle down

and do it, do it.

Then the shots rang out.

emily.foxhall@latimes.com