D.A. to Seek Death Penalty Against 3 in Drive-By Slayings

The Orange County district attorney’s office will seek the death penalty against three alleged members of Santa Ana’s 5th Street gang who are charged with murdering two people in one of the worst drive-by shootings in Orange County history, the prosecutor said Thursday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef said he will file an amended complaint today adding the special circumstance of multiple murder against Louis Palomino Valadez, Robert Phillip Figueroa and Roman Gabriel Menchaca, all of Santa Ana. The multiple-murder allegation means that the men could be sentenced to death if they are convicted.

A fourth suspect, a 14-year-old Santa Ana boy who police have said was one of two alleged triggermen in the Sept. 16 murders in Garden Grove, cannot legally be sentenced to death or tried as an adult, Avdeef said.

Fearing that Thursday’s arrests of 5th Street gang members may trigger retribution by their comrades against rival 17th Street gang members, Garden Grove and Santa Ana police stepped up their patrols of the two turfs, but they have picked up no hint of impending violence, said Garden Grove Police Sgt. Phil Mason, who is directing the murder investigation.

“Our gang detail is keeping its ear to the ground,” Mason said Thursday. “But it’s like trying to read smoke signals in the mountains.”

Police have been interviewing the four defendants, but they show no willingness to cooperate, Mason said.

Valadez, 28; Figueroa, 20; Menchaca, 19, and the 14-year-old boy gang member are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of first-degree murder, 11 counts of attempted murder and one count of street terrorism. The three adults were scheduled to be arraigned today in West Municipal Court in Westminster. The 14-year-old boy, whose name was withheld because of his age, faces a detention hearing in Juvenile Court on Tuesday.

Police said they believe that Menchaca and the 14-year-old crouched in the back of a moving red pickup truck and sprayed semiautomatic gunfire into a cluster of 13 people gathered outside a Garden Grove home on Sept 16. Police believe that Valadez owned and drove the truck and that Figueroa was a passenger.

Even though there appear to have been only two triggermen, Mason said the conspiracy and murder charges are warranted against all four because police believe that they plotted the attack.

The bullets killed Miguel (Smokey) Navarro, 17, a member of the rival 17th Street gang, and 4-year-old Frank Fernandez Jr. At least six others were wounded, including the toddler’s mother, aunt, and 2-year-old brother, as well as a 26-year-old man who lost his leg due to bullet wounds.

Randall Albert Martinez, 20, a fifth purported gang member who was arrested during Thursday’s raids when police found several guns in his Santa Ana home, is not a suspect in the homicides, Mason said.

Martinez was being held on suspicion of possessing a gun without a serial number and child endangerment for keeping loaded weapons within reach of his 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Mason said. He was to be arraigned today along with the three others in Westminster.

Police have ordered ballistics tests on the gun to determine if it was one of two murder weapons, but they did not expect to have the results for at least two weeks.

Martinez, who is Valadez’s nephew, was shot in the chest during a drive-by shooting in Santa Ana a week before the Garden Grove murders. Police have speculated that the Sept. 16 attack might have been retribution for Martinez’s wounding.