The family of Little Roberto Lopez, Jr., laid the 4-year-old's body to rest last week.
Homicide investigators say they believe that a bullet fired by a gang member in a dispute with some rivals claimed the boy's life.
It happened in the early afternoon in the Westlake district west of Downtown, the hardscrabble home of tens of thousands of hardworking families, just a mile or so from gleaming skyscrapers and City Hall.
The bullet cut Roberto down as he walked with his sister, just a few doors from their home. He wasn't the first baby in the neighborhood to fall to a stray bullet — an infant in a stroller met a similar fate not so long ago.
I hope the Lopez family can take some solace in the thought that fleets of Angels will surely accompany any fallen child to eternal reward. I wish for another fleet of Angels to help them as they remain earthbound, their lives forever diminished by their loss.
It's not hard to consider the obvious difficulties that confront family members who lose children — whether by murder or accident or some other circumstance. It's clear that the families will carry an extra burden for the rest of their lives. Who hasn't heard of such circumstances and not thought immediately of the grief that would rise up and stay forever if it happened to one of their own?
There are times, however, when such feelings go from an intellectual realization and perhaps even an emotional exercise to a flesh-and-blood reminder. I received one the other day from a woman I've known for years. She stopped me in the lobby of the building where she's employed as a maintenance worker. She wanted to talk about the Lopez shooting after reading a report in the Garment & Citizen.
It turned out that there was plenty I didn't know about this woman.
She told me that she, too, had lost a son to violent crime. She maintained her composure throughout our conversation — but she couldn't do anything about her eyes. There, in the deep brown of her gaze, the pain lived fresh and raw. It stood in contrast to the businesslike set of the rest of her face. She had a point to make, she had experience to share. This was a matter of duty, it seemed, and she delivered the message without a quiver of voice or a frown of mouth. She looked me right in the eyes as she spoke, though, and her secret pain showed through the small windows to her soul.
The families of murder victims have much to do after their loved one is buried, she said. She didn't tell me how much she cried after her son died, or how much strain the loss put on her, and her husband, and their other children. She told of the other half of life after murder — how she spent months and years seeking justice.
She told me that the homicide investigators working on her son's case asked her to remember anything she could about events surrounding the killing, whether or not a particular detail seemed to have anything to do with the case. You never know, they said. Sometimes a little fact is a big break in a murder investigation.
She carried a notebook with her for months, ready to write down any detail that came to mind.
The investigation led to no arrests after several months. She worried that her son would be forgotten by the justice system. She began to take days off work to sit for hours in the police station, waiting to grab a moment with the detectives on the case. She knew they were working on more than one. She wanted to remind them that all of them count, even when there are too many cases and not enough detectives.
The cops tracked down a couple of suspects a few weeks after her last visit to the station. A court eventually found them guilty, and sent the murderers off to prison. Like her slain son, they were youths themselves, and received relatively short sentences. But not before she sat and watched them strut proudly in the courtroom, the gang culture they had embraced apparently allowing no show of remorse for what they had taken.
Then it was time for her to track the guilty ones. She periodically traveled to parole hearings for nearly a decade, taking more time off work and visiting various prison facilities to tell officials that the killers should not be freed even one day early.
She worked doggedly to see that one of the assailants — an immigrant, like herself — got deported upon his release from prison.
She kept on spending money and time and her spirit — right up until the moment that there was no more the justice system could do. The convicts served their full sentences, and a killer was sent back to his country.
Since then she has carried this burden, filled this void and moved on with dignity.
The pain is still in her eyes, though.
She is a mother, and her little boy is dead.
She is not alone — she often shares lunch with a woman who works with her, another mother of a murdered son.
Can you imagine a sadder club in all the world?
Can anyone tell me who takes pride in the eternal pain of our mothers?
Jerry Sullivan is editor of L.A. Garment & Citizen.
Fund for Family of Slain 4-Year-Old
By Garment & Citizen staff
A charitable fund has been established to aid the family of Robert J. Lopez, Jr., a four-year-old boy recently killed by a stray bullet as he walked on a street in the Westlake district west of Downtown.
Donations of checks, money orders, or cash can be made to the Roberto Lopez Jr. Memorial Fund at any Wells Fargo Bank branch. Donors can also call the office of 1st District Los Angeles City Councilmember Ed Reyes at (213) 485-0763 for more information.
Lopez died from wounds sustained on afternoon of January 13 on the 1200 block of W. Court Street. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigators have said they believe the gunshot came from a gang member in a dispute with rivals. Investigators recently arrested Howard Astorga as a suspect in the case. Investigators identified Astorga as a gang member and recent parolee. An investigation of the case remains ongoing, according to investigators, who credited community members with providing information that led to Astorga's arrest.
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