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| Carl Valverde Jr. enjoying time with his 5-year-old daughter Destinee before he was killed. |
Violent Homicide of Yet Another Young
San Pedro Man Ends Up Saving Many Other
Lives; Los Angeles Police Want His Killer and His Family and Friends Want
Justice
By Diana L. Chapman
He was the kind of kid most of us in the
more affluent enclave of San Pedro don't want to know about. He did drugs. Had
two children, one when he was 14, the other at 19. He moved from house to house
many times because he didn't want to work or follow his mother's "tough
love" rules after she made herself a better life and remarried.
He was estranged from his biological
father, who is currently in jail. His mother, Angela Perez, knows the exact day
she first lost her 19-year-old son, Carl Valverde Jr. He was 11-years-old. His
toddler brother, Robert, 3, had pulled balloons out of Carl's pocket and began
chewing on them.
When they both yelped asking what he
had, Robert gasped, inhaled, and Carl watched his baby brother choke to death
in front of him. He never forgave himself, his mother said. After that, she
knew he was lost because she too was lost, swimming in her own grief and
addictions. Carl became angry and began
to engage in drug usage. He quit going to school and was speeding downhill
fast.
His whole world was defined by the moment
his brother died. And the story was well known to those close to him.
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| Samantha and Carl's baby, Robert |
Instead, the young man, nicknamed the
"Beast" for his football player size, was fatally shot and killed in
an unprovoked attack as the couple strolled home on Halloween night, possibly
falling victim to African-American gang members. No matter what Carl has done,
he didn't deserve to die, LAPD detectives said.
"Our belief is that Carl did nothing wrong," said Los Angeles Detective Greg Halka of the LAPD's Harbor Division adding that Carl had no gang ties and was a complete "innocent." Both Halka and his partner, Detective Scott Coffee called the crime despicable, possibly racial and in some ways unusual. The detectives didn't judge Carl's lifestyle. They just want to catch his killer. And so do his family and friends.
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| Samantha and Carl before their baby was born. |
"When Sabrina called me, I was devastated," said Christopher David Young who manages a Fred Brown Recovery Home in San Pedro and is the boyfriend of Samantha's mother, Sabrina Zanvich. "Carl was trying to get on his feet. Everybody's got to have a second chance and he was trying to love and take care of his baby.
"He was a good kid and someone
stripped him of his chance. It's shameful. It's cowardly."
In death, Carl would save four other
lives. He would never have a chance to fix his own. He died, holding Samantha's
hand, on a cold Los Angeles street the night America celebrates its ghost and ghouls.
He also joined the ranks of numerous other killings of mainly young men in the
Harbor Area and across Los Angeles that remain unsolved. Often gang related
killings have erupted in the City of the Angels, most stemming from mounting
tensions between Hispanic and black gang members.
Those killings, however, began spilling
over into everyday people's lives, often based on color. Carl might have been
one of them. While homicide crime numbers are down, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa's first admitted the racial tensions existed, but then began to
back away from the idea that his city
had been rocked by hate crimes. His
former LAPD Police Chief William Bratton stood by his side.
It might have looked too bad for the
city of the Angels. Bad for tourism. Bad for business. Bad that visitors might
quit coming scared of getting shot.
Carl's death gained little media
attention. It appears the families involved, Carl's friends and two LAPD
detectives working the case are the most concerned about bringing the shooter
and accomplices to justice. Other's have simply forgotten his murder. Or don't care.
Detectives
said the killing has the markings of gang member activity. Gangs are thriving
in Los Angeles city and county. In the city alone, 450 gangs rule the streets
" with a combined membership of 45,000 individuals," according to an
LAPD website. Some are 50 years old.
In the past
three years alone, gangsters have committed "16,398 verified violence gang crimes": 491 homicides, 7,047 felony assaults, 5,518 robberies
and "just under 98 rapes," the LAPD reported.
Detectives said on Halloween night Samantha
and Carl went to visit her grandmother, close to where his 5-year-old daughter
Destinee lives. While he didn't financially help out, he showered Destinee with
love and she adored him, lighting up the
minute she saw him, friends said. Samantha didn't seem to mind visiting
with Carl's daughter who he had with a 16-year-old girl when he was 14.
Destinee lives with her grandmother and her
mother, Rachel DeLucas, now 22.
One
of Carl's best attributes was that he loved children and they loved him back.
He would have been happy to have a "football team of kids," Rachel
said, adding that he was an excellent father, often visiting, babysitting and
hanging out with Destinee. When he had a job briefly, he spent his money buying
clothes for his daughter.
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| Carl with, Destinee, and his former girlfriend, Rachel | DeLucas |
Now, instead of a visit, Rachel said,
she was trying to figure out how to tell her 5-year-old that her dad was dead.
Fortunately that night, Carl and
Samantha left baby Robert tucked at home safely with other family members and
were headed home about 9:40 p.m. A
couple who joined them were further ahead as they neared 13th Street and Grand
Avenue. Trick-or treaters were still milling about and plenty of people were
walking the streets making it a "solvable crime" detectives said, if
only witnesses would come forward.
Three African American men or youths apparently
dropped behind the couple. Samantha began twitching with nervousness. They
seemed young to her. Maybe in their late teens, perhaps a bit older. But Carl
wasn't particularly afraid. He'd been in fights before. He'd lived in these
streets a long time but stayed clear of gangs.
Then the men or boys fell behind the
couple and began "mad dogging"
them, giving "bad looks," Samantha said recalling what
happened in detail. When one cut away, relief swarmed over her until someone
shouted out: "Hey."
Carl turned, looked back at the
assailants, turned again to look at Samantha when a bullet suddenly pierced the
back of his head. Carl went down, but stood back up. He told Samantha he had to
race home to shower the blood away. He made it about a block to Pacific Avenue
and 13th before he faltered again. He grabbed Samantha's hand as blood gushed
over both of them.
"I saw him fading and he wouldn't
let go of my hand," Samantha recalled, lips trembling. "He said he
knows he's leaving. He told me he loved me and said I made him happy. I cried
all the way to the hospital. The doctor told me there was nothing they could
do. He was brain dead. I was screaming."
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| Carl with his girlfriend Samantha when their baby Robert was born. |
One thing Carl could grasp in those few
moments in the black street where he was dying was that he was with one of the
woman he apparently loved. Samantha held his hand until the light nearly went
out, instantly crushing three families, two of them now having to raise a
beautiful infant who will never know his father. A third child might be on the
way. In a complication that Carl left behind, Rachel said she's seven months
pregnant with his baby.
The baby's arrival date is June 2 and
her name is Carlee Valverde. Samantha chooses to not believe it.
***
Heading to the hospital, a hysterical
Samantha called her mother, Sabrina, and Carl's mother, Angela. They both
arrived at the emergency room, Sabrina first, where she found her daughter
coated in blood at UCLA Medical Center
in Carson. Still confused about what happened, Sabrina thought her daughter had
been shot.
"She was covered in blood and
screaming," Sabrina said, "saying: 'It's not me. It's Carl."
Samantha and Carl were "inseparable" and living with her at the time,
Sabrina said. She immediately let go of her frustrations that the couple still
hadn't pulled their lives together yet. In fact, she made them go live in Utah
to change their environment and become drug free. Carl wasn't the only one
playing with drugs.
They came back drugless, pregnant and
jobless, Sabrina said. While Carl had studied and got his certificate to be a
dental assistant, he never followed through with the program. Samantha's mom had
known Carl since he was eight, found him "self-willed" and
"Samantha's first crush" when her daughter was in elementary school.
He was a kid, she noted, who was possibly brilliant if he would only let
himself be.
He didn't.
His mother agrees, citing that he became
afraid to love anyone anymore fearing he would lose them. After his brother's
death, he buried himself in excessive use of weed and alcohol. It only worsened
when Angela's oldest son, Michael, got married and moved to a small town in
Iowa to get away from all the gang violence. Angela, realizing this would be a
good move for her 16-year-old daughter, Vanessa, who was getting into fights already, asked Michael to take her too to get her out of town.
Vanessa would eventually graduate with a
college degree and is now 23.
Because he was too young, his mother
didn't send Carl. But his sense of loss only deepened, his mother said. He
couldn't understand why his half-brother and half-sister were leaving him if
they truly loved him.
Their departure capitulated the teen
even further down in his dark pit. He refused to go to school and often would
lay around until his friends called. He was depressed, Angela thought. She quit her excessive
drinking, cleaned herself up and turned her own life around.
She remarried.
But Carl's refusal to do anything, his
numerous truancies and growing drug use forced his mother to put him in a
"placement" group home where he would at least be in school. It
provided counseling, but Carl refused to talk. All Angela's efforts had proven
fruitless. After that, Carl would go from one placement home to another,
getting out and starting all over again.
But for once in his life, Carl's mom said,
after he met Samantha again, she could see him slowly beginning to emerge, a
flicker of change was there and he began to show he was ready "to become a
man."
Samantha and Carl hadn't seen each other
since elementary school, but when they ran into each other again as teenagers
at age 17, the sparks were instantaneous. They traveled together everywhere,
worried their moms endlessly and Carl started to live at Sabrina's home.
No one could deny they loved each other.
When Angela got the phone call to come
to the hospital, she was baffled. Carl had told her earlier that day that he
was happy, excited and had "everything ready to go" to move into a
recovery center. Now, she was getting calls to rush to the hospital about her son.
When Angela arrived bringing Rachel,
doctors told her what Samantha already knew. Carl was brain dead. This time his mother knew she lost Carl forever.
Doctors asked if she would donate Carl's
organs.
"Yes," she said. "I
figured if one life has to go, I thought other people deserved to live. "If
Carl's organs were transplanted, Angela also
believed, she would still have a bit of him left on Earth.
Carl would live on life support for four
more days until his organ's were harvested.
***
Carl's shooting garnered little media
attention other than a few paragraphs in a local paper. He wasn't an A student.
He didn't have a stellar reputation. He wasn't a popular football and
basketball player like San Pedro High Laterian Tasby (L.T.) , 17, who was
fatally shot at a weekend party a week before Halloween in 2007.
Tasby, an African-American who some
called the 6'6'' "monster," tried to protect his friends when
allegedly some Hispanic youths crashed the party, toting knives and provoking a
brawl. Tasby was shot in the chest trying to save his friends.
The case was never solved.
Carl also wasn't 14-year-old Cheryl
Green, an African-American girl gunned down in broad daylight when she was
standing on a corner with some friends. The friends were chatting in her Harbor Gateway neigborhood on December 2006 when a Hispanic gang member shot at them,
killing Cheryl and injuring several of her friends.
It was blatant "hate" crime. African
Americans living in the neighborhood revealed that Hispanic gangs harassed,
beat them and showed clear boundaries of where African Americans were allowed
to move in their own neighborhood. Several Hispanic gang members were later arrested
in Cheryl's death and sentenced to life in prison.
A new recreation center run by the Boys
and Girls was opened in 2009 as a safe haven for kids in Harbor City, Harbor Gateway and
Torrance. It was named after Cheryl.
Unlike Carl's case, the media descended
upon L.T.'s story because of his transformation at the Boys and Girls Club from
near gang member to a star athlete, playing both football and basketball at San
Pedro High School. Students who witnessed his stunning changes said he inspired
them, but not one teenager at the party would step forward as witnesses to snag
the assailants.
They were terrified, not just for themselves
but for their families. Those killers were left to roam the streets.
Cheryl's case drew a much bigger media frenzy and
went nationally because her death was considered a hate crime bringing in the
FBI, Villaraigosa, then LAPD Police Chief William Bratton, then Los Angeles Councilwoman
Janice Hahn and hordes of cameras and
media crews. At that time, Villaraigosa and Bratton admitted there were racial
tensions brewing in the city between Hispanic and African Americans gangs . But
gang members weren't just killing each other anymore.
Their violence was spilling over the lives'
of everyday people. People like Carl.
Carl had no city officials swoop in
after his death. His death wasn't considered a "hate" crime, although
his loved ones wonder why. His story wasn't sexy enough. He was just another kid shot and killed in what
many San Pedro residents consider a poor, crime riddled neighborhood. From some
assessments, San Pedro is "a Tale of Two Cities," a local principal
said one day.
There appeared to be an invisible, long-harbored
demarcation line with the impoverished, petty criminals and gangs living east
of Gaffey Street even though many professionals have moved in over recent
years. The thoroughfare conveniently slices San Pedro in two-divides.
Middle and upper middle class residents tended
to live to the west of the major boulevard, often warning friends to stay far
away from the area in an industrial community that started out on the backs of
fisherman and now boasts the Port of Los Angeles, the largest in the world.
The area also has a sprawling and
embedded housing facilities called Rancho San Pedro. It is blamed consistently for
all of San Pedro's woes.
As the mothers sat at the hospital together
they both agreed too many kids and young adults, were dying from violence in Harbor
Area streets where they both live.
***
Los Angeles police detectives assigned
to the case weren't judgmental of Carl's life style and could see in the years
ahead he might of transformed. While Carl had no gangs ties, he was cordial to
gang members, they explained, like so many other youths living in gang-ridden
neighborhoods who want to survive.
But the detectives are frustrated too as
only rumors have poured in, nothing concrete with any evidence. They can't convict
anyone without evidence and are waiting for that single lead, no matter how
small that could help them make a case.
The suspected killers, who allegedly
might have been members of the Dodge City Crips, were believed to be between
the ages of 16 to 22 and around 5' 6" and 5' 10'' tall. After the
shooting, they slipped away in the darkness of the night and vanished.
Hakka and Coffee find a few oddities
with the case. One was that no discussion happened between the victim and the
suspects. Usually, some conversation happens even if it's short, such as a gang
member asking a victim what neighborhood they're from.
"This is not typical," said
LAPD Detective Scott Coffee. "It was a pretty random thing. We don't have
a lot of walk up shootings. It is consistently gang like and it happened really quick."
The detectives are asking the public
"to do the right thing" if they witnessed anything, overheard any
"bragging" conversations pertaining to the case or have knowledge in
any other facet that would bring justice to Carl and his family.
Anonymous options are available through
Crime Stoppers, they said, a non-profit organization not run by police that
makes it easy for witnesses to call in anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). The detectives can also be reached: Halka at 310-726-7886 and Coffee at 310-726-7880.
The officers working to solve the case
the are asking the families for "patience."
While family and friends noticed Carl
was transforming, including Rachel, she believes the possible overhaul of his life
might not have been about "the two women he loved," but for his
children.
Her daughter, Destinee, cried when
Rachel told her her father was dead and continues to ask for him. While some of
those involved want Rachel to take a paternity test when her new baby is born,
she said she doesn't need too. She knows exactly who the father is.
Carl really never stood a chance, those
that loved him said. It seemed he might have suffered from depression after his
brother died. Sabrina, Samantha's mom, said she argued with him all the time
and was furious when her daughter became pregnant.
All involved agree, including Samantha,
that Carl's son Robert will be cared for by other family members and that she needs to return
to school to find a career.
Now
as Sabrina holds a giddy, gurgling Robert in her arms with interested family
members surrounding them, she knows that the 4-month old infant will have a
much greater future than his father. There are so many who love him. And in the
end, she is happy that she has a grandson and now believes Carl did didn't have
much of a chance given his circumstances.
"As much as we would fight with
Carl, I wanted more for my grandson," Sabrina said as she clenched his
gurgling baby in her arms. "But in the end (Carl) wanted more out of life
too."
A shrine remains for Carl at Grand
Avenue and 13th streets, littered with signs posted by friends that they love
and miss "the Beast."
Much of the words left for him flap in
the wind.
POSTSCRIPT:
Four
lives were saved using Carl's organs. One Legacy, the organization
that
handle his case, outlined where the donations went in a letter written
to his mother. Four out of five of the transplants were successful. Here are
the people he saved and the one where the transplant failed:
--Carl's left kidney and pancreas were
donated to a man living in California, in his 30s, married and working for a
school district. It is the first time the man has been able to be off dialysis
in three years.
--A teenage boy, also in California, who
likes to play soccer and basketball, received Carl's kidney. The successful
transplant allowed him to terminate
dialysis after being on it for two years.
--Carl's liver was transplanted in a
woman in her 60s."While everyone involved expected a positive outcome, the
liver did not function once transplanted," the letter stated. "This
woman is hopeful that another family
will say yes to donation as you so generously did."
--A man in his 20s, a tutor and resident
of California, received Carl's lungs and
has been doing well, the letter said.
--The father of two children in his 50s
who lives in Rhode Island received Carl's heart. He is a doctor now enjoying
taking care of his children and "his heart is recovering well."
