Innocent Victim Dies in Gang Cross-Fire

As temperatures cooled and barbecue smells filled the evening air, Randy and Rebecca Schlecht left their Huntington Park home for a short stroll.

On their way back, only two blocks from their house, Randy heard what he thought was children throwing firecrackers. When his wife clutched her chest and collapsed, he thought she was being playful.

Then a trickle of blood slid down her neck. A bullet had pierced her chest.

Rebecca Schlecht, 37, was pronounced dead at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood at 7:05 p.m. Sunday, an unintended victim caught in gang members’ cross-fire, police said.

On Monday, Randy Schlecht reverently placed four pots of roses that his wife had nurtured on the grassy patch where she fell the day before.

“I keep thinking, what if she’d stopped to tie her shoe?” he said through sobs. “What if we’d taken longer getting back? This would never have happened.”

As Schlecht wept, children on bicycles raced up and down the street, past manicured flower beds adorning $200,000 homes. Neighbors along Live Oak Street sat outside sipping drinks. None could remember hearing gunshots on their street before.

“I’ve been here 20 years, and nothing like this has ever happened,” Richard Sanchez, 46, said. “There are no gang affiliations here.”

Few people were out front when the shots rang out, neighbors said. And fewer wanted to talk about what happened.

“I think everyone’s scared to talk about it,” said Nuria Rivas, a student at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

According to Huntington Park police, three or four gang members riding in a white van drove past the couple on their walk, made a U-turn, and opened fire.

Police said they suspect rival gang members were nearby and may have been shooting back. Casings from 9-millimeter and .22-caliber weapons were found in the area, said Sgt. Tony Porter.

Neighbors said police arrived within minutes of the shooting but were unable to save Schlecht.

On Monday, relatives recalled the woman who squirreled away piles of other people’s junk--television sets, videos, baby furniture--that her husband would fix and hawk at garage sales. She spent as much time donating her wares as selling them, they said.

“She gave away all kinds of things,” said her brother-in-law, Jerome Krieger, who had with him a dog, Misty, that she had given him. “That’s the way she was. She didn’t want anything for herself.”

She shared whatever she had with friends, neighbors and her husband of less than four years, they said.

“They never left each other’s side,” said Michael Krieger, the couple’s nephew. “If you saw one, you saw the other. He loved her a lot.”