PACOIMA – In one of the last photos taken of Alejandro Villa before he was shot to death less than a block from his home, he is smiling, sitting in the back of a limousine.
The snapshot is from a quinceañera, where the 14-year-old boy danced so much and had such a good time that he promised to dance more often, his sister said.
And for months, he had been telling his mother he was going to stay out of trouble. He even had joined a boxing class through the gang intervention group Communities in School.
But Alejandro teetered on the edge, sometimes mixing with the wrong crowd. And in the end, his words to his family weren’t enough.
Around 8:30 p.m. Monday, the former Charles Maclay Middle School student was shot in the back after a fist fight between two groups of teens at Van Nuys and Glenoaks boulevards.
It’s unclear what prompted the fight, but as it broke up, someone fired a shot, said Detective Heather Gahry of the LAPD’s Foothill Division. Police are investigating the crime as gang-related.
“I am so sad,” said his sister, Nelly, as crowds of middle-schoolers gathered outside the family’s cramped two-bedroom apartment near the scene. Alejandro’s father stood off to the side, his eyes misting with tears.
“He was trying not to worry my mom. He would be calling her and telling her where he was,” she said. “When it was late she would go out and look for him. She did so much for him.
“Nobody has the right to take someone’s life.”
But in this part of Pacoima, residents say violence and gangs are part of everyday living.
“I used to tell him, ‘Be careful. There are a lot of enemies out here,” said Aldo Gutierrez, 18, who often saw Alejandro hanging out in front of Las Palmas, the tattered apartments where he lived with his family, or at the boxing gym.
Gutierrez, whose apartment faces the sidewalk where Alejandro was killed, said he understands how easy it is for a kid to get swept up by Pacoima. He left town after one of his good friends was killed near his home.
On Monday night, Alejandro’s dad, who declined to comment, had run to where his son lay on the sidewalk and held him in his arms as he took his final breaths, said Blinky Rodriguez, Communities in Schools president.
Tuesday afternoon, a trickle of students arrived at a makeshift memorial with flowers and a poster board reading “Slash,” Alejandro’s nickname, in blue ink.
Many of them knew Alejandro, even though he recently had been kicked out of school for fighting, his sister said.
Communities in Schools officials came to talk to the students and the family, offering support and doing what they could to prevent another teen from dying too young.
“He was a good kid with a good heart,” Rodriguez said. “But he was vacillating with which way he wanted to go with his life.”
