Gang Kills Father of 3 After Basketball Game

SANTA ANA —  A man was shot to death, and his two brothers and a friend were wounded by a pack of gang members who riddled the victims’ van with bullets after a pickup basketball game at Santa Ana High School, police said Thursday.

“There is absolutely nothing to indicate the victims were gang members,” said Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton. “They were just there playing basketball.”

The brothers were among nine men playing a pickup game about 8 p.m. Wednesday when as many as 15 gang members harassed them off the court, Helton and other officers said.

The dead man was identified as Mauro Vergara Meza, 31, a landscape nursery driver and father of three who was shot in the mouth after the gang blocked the school parking lot exit and circled the van.

Even some veteran police officers were surprised by the brutality.

“They started banging on the van, messing with mirrors and (Meza) says to one guy: ‘Hey, why are you messing with us?’ And that’s when the one guy put a gun in his mouth and the rest of them went crazy,” said an officer with knowledge of the case who did not want to be identified. “They just opened fire.

“This was just totally senseless,” he added. “This was not gang against gang. These were innocents, and to just go over and blow them away for nothing.”

The shooting comes at a time when police and community leaders in Orange County have decried escalating gang violence. Police departments in such cities as Westminster, Anaheim and Santa Ana have created anti-gang units to help curb the problem.

The incident was the most serious in an escalation of violence around the high school that has prompted the closing of an adjacent street to discourage drive-by shootings. The school is a few blocks from the Civic Center, Orange County’s center of government.

“The cop assigned to that campus . . . came in a few months back, and said: ‘We’ve got a real problem, and it’s not on campus but for the kids walking home from school,’ ” said Sgt. Don Blankenship, president of the Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn.

“But what are you going to do? You can’t escort each and every student home.”

At least three weapons were used in the attack, including a rifle, police said.

One brother, Benito Vergara Meza, 20, was airlifted to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo for treatment of a chest wound. He was listed in satisfactory condition. The other, Winulfo Meza, 24, was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the head and was in critical condition.

A 16-year-old boy who was with them, whose name was not released because of his age, was treated at Coastal Communities Hospital in Santa Ana for a wound to his hand and was released.

On Sept. 11, a special education teacher was caught in the middle of a gun battle as she left school.