WDA | Special Episode | South Central Gang

What starts as a routine gang altercation outside Virtua’s Liquor in South Central L.A. quickly escalates into something far more deadly. When a gang member is told to make peace after a fight, he walks straight into an ambush—unarmed and unaware of what awaits him. Detective Rich Ramirez recounts the gang-related investigation, the shocking plea deal, and an 11-year prison sentence. 

Thanks for listening. Check out the WDA animation on youtube and follow our socials for more.

Follow, comment, and share! 🎙️💀
📲 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube
🔗 @whendeathawaits

Transcript

It was about seven or eight, and generally during the summers we get a lot of activity in particular down in south los angeles and in particular down around the central avenue areas because we handle anywhere the los angeles kind of sheriff's department handles south of 120th and and up so
North is generally LAPD's area. South is the Sheriff's Department's area. And you make that distinction even as I was working street gangs and working down in the Carson area. At one point, we had that county area. Nonetheless, I was kind of familiar with the area. And in this case, on this particular evening, I get dispatched to a location, I believe on 120th.
And Central Avenue, it's Virtua's Liquor. You know, what's interesting is that, unfortunately, the Virtua's Liquor has been the scene of a number of fights and shootings. I guess it's kind of like where you have a confluence of a whole boatload of gangs that are in that area. So there's inevitably, there's going to be some kind of conflict. So it turns out that I get dispatched.
With my partner in this case, it was Bobby Taylor. I always make it a point to try and contact people at the scene because if the first responders or maybe gang units will be there. And in this case, I get a call that somebody had been shot, not at Virtua's liquor, but around the corner from there. So I'm like, I call up one of the gang investigators from Century Sheriff's Station, which covered that area.
And he explains to me that someone had been shot around the corner and it was connected to an altercation that had occurred at Virtuous Liquor moments before. And I said, do you know who possible suspect is in this case? And he tells me, he says, yeah, you know, he mentions the suspect. And I said, hmm, I said, do you have a photo of him?
he goes yeah i said can you put him in a photographic array what we refer to as a six-pack so now i'm driving down there and i'm actually developing the case for x to expedite the potential capture of a murder suspect so as i'm driving down by the time i arrive over to the crime scene
The gang detectives already have the photo rig for me. I was like, wow, cool. I said, this is great. I said, who do we have as a witness? And he says, well, we have a girlfriend. And so, okay, that's fine. Let's go talk to her. And at that point, I went and spoke with her. And basically what happens, this is a fascinating story. And I don't understand how and why somebody would do this.
was that the girlfriend who very much was cooperative, and I always find that when you have an incident that just occurs for whatever reason, the witnesses are very, especially in these gang-related cases, are very much inclined to be cooperative. But then as time elapses, they come to the realization that, wait a minute, there's consequences to my cooperation. Not so much by law enforcement, but by the neighbor.
and the neighborhood gang members and the police who are pinched, you know, are obviously going to start looking for witnesses. And it's been historically, and unfortunately, one of my misfortunes is that when I do have a cooperative witness at the initial stages, and now they've suddenly become uncooperative, I find that it's very difficult to find them in many cases. So we have to go to the extent of even going so far as to get a...
what they refer to as a body attachment from the courts in order to get them into custody. Believe it or not, witnesses in custody. But I digress. Let's go back to the story. Talk to the gal. And she says, yes, I was there. I had taken my boyfriend, who was one of the street gangs.
from that area and i won't even mention the gangs because i don't want to give these folks recognition but he in fact is uh goes to liquor store and he's confronted by another gang and it's not necessarily a rival gang member but just another gang member and apparently for whatever reason which of course i never got the full story on what precipitated the fight but in front of virtuous liquor they began to to fist fight
and they're fighting and as they're fighting they eventually stop and then they go their own separate ways i suspect that the fight according from the video that i saw it probably lasted about a good two minutes and there was nobody making any effort to try and stop the fight that's what i found interesting but that was caught on video so now our victim soon to be victim leaves and our suspect
goes south on central and he goes i think down to 121st which he lives in that general area and apparently from what i understand our soon-to-be victim and i for lack of a better word he is basically uh told by his fellow gang members that he better bury the hatchet with this guy that he just fought or we're gonna have a potential
gang war between this rival gang which was not a rival gang but they could potentially become a rival gang if you do not remedy this situation so he tells his girlfriend he says i gotta go back over there and i gotta go talk to dude and tell him what basically you know happened and i guess to some extent to apologize and again i'm not sure if that wasn't his intent but nonetheless so he gets in his girlfriend's car he's a passenger his girlfriend drives him eastbound from central avenue as they're driving down he tells his girlfriend stop they hadn't arrived yet and he gets out of the car because he knows where this guy lives because pretty much everybody knows everybody i mean they've been together since elementary school you know and so he gets out of the car now he's walking
In front of his girlfriend's car. And he's walking as though he's like a combat soldier. Unarmed, by the way. He does not have any guns. He does not have any weaponry of any nature. As we did establish. And he walks down. And as he gets to the residence of our suspect. The suspect comes out of his house. Or at least was in that general vicinity. And he has two of his friends. And they walk up.
to our victim. And apparently there was an exchange of a conversation. I think our victim was in fact making some effort to try and resolve this peacefully. And as they're discussing this thing, and by the way, this conversation is witnessed by the girlfriend who's parked in the middle of the street, right in front of these two fine folks who are standing there talking, including those two other gentlemen.
when our suspect pulls out a gun and fires and shoots our victim in the head. And our victim goes down. And at that point, the girlfriend, she's like, what? And it was jaw dropping. Now she believes that to some extent she may be next. So she backs up and then drives away. And of course, all three of our...
uh suspects are in the middle of the street they they run off and this is where i come in apparently 911 is called and at that juncture i get there fortunately for me by the time i got there uh they had already had uh like i mentioned earlier we had already had a suspect identified not in the context of the shooter but we did have an identification of the guy he had had the altercation with
So it wasn't until I talked to the girlfriend who at that point, the initial stages of this investigation was very cooperative and says, yes, that's the guy who shot my boyfriend. And so we're okay. That's cool. And so now, of course, the search is on for our suspect. And lo and behold.
I learned that he's on parole. He had just gone off parole for, he was out of prison for an assault with a deadly weapon charge, which is not surprising to me. And as a result, I employed the services of our undercover parole agents. I generally made it a point if the suspect was on parole, I had a group of undercover parole officers.
that were just amazingly helpful to me. I probably used them in many, many, many investigations. And lo and behold, they were able to locate him and take him to jail and violate his parole just based on the statements. Ultimately, I mean, granted, this is a rather quick story, but it worked out really well. Ultimately, we got now the suspect.
about to go to trial and he takes a plea deal uh for 11 years in prison and i suspect again uh this case is going out of compton court there's what we refer to in the legal world as mitigating circumstances meaning why did this guy go to his house as opposed to maybe meeting in some more neutral area where everybody could have been part of the conversation but instead he goes to his house
and as a result of that and by the way when he was taken into custody by the parole people um i sat him down and he refused to talk to me so needless to say that wasn't going to go anywhere it's a pretty common theme uh most inmates that have been to the joint slash prison
generally will invoke their constitutional rights they're not going to want to talk to you they already know the game they already know the program and so once they say i wanted a lawyer all conversations are off so as a result like i said he got 11 years he hopefully he's out um but if he's not he's probably committed another crime i've never followed up on this thing so
That's pretty much the story in a, not even in a nutshell, that's pretty much the story in terms of the altercation and to ultimately the death of this young man.