TFK member killed a 2 yr old in 03.

I came across this..I remember hearing something about this before, but didn't know the details and didn't realize a 2 yr old was killed. Sounds like this dude just lost it.

Archive for Sunday, January 26, 2003
Inexplicable Violence Stuns 2 Families
By Daniel Hernandez and Stephanie Chavez
January 26, 2003 in print edition B-1

The young mother closed her eyes, massaging her temples with her fingers as if to ease the pain inside, and recounted how a man “with the face of the devil” had shot her 2-year-old son in the head as the boy ate chicken nuggets at Burger King.

“I started screaming, ‘You killed my child! Why did you kill my child?’ ” said Yessenia Rochin.

She remembers shielding her two other boys, fearing more shots. Then she looked up. The gunman calmly walked out of the Pomona restaurant as she cried after him: “Why did you do that? Why did you kill my son?”

Thirty miles away in Rialto, the father of the killer also asks how his son could do such a thing. He has no answers.

John Moreno also grieves for a lost son, Daniel Moreno, who was shot and killed by Pomona police minutes after he killed little Osvaldo Martinez.

Daniel Moreno, a father of a young boy himself, was 24, the same age as Rochin.

John Moreno said he didn’t know the depths of his son’s trouble. Authorities describe Daniel Moreno as a drug-using gang member with “TFK” for “The Fontana Kings” gang tattooed across his stomach.

“We don’t understand anything about this

The Moreno family’s longtime pastor, Samuel Valverde, said that the police characterization “doesn’t surprise me,” because Daniel Moreno had recently confided that there were “things he needed to turn away from” in his life.

Valverde leads the Apostolic congregation in Fontana where the Moreno family has worshipped since Daniel was 5 years old.

He knew there was a darker side to Daniel Moreno and had recently encouraged the young man to return to the church. But shoot a child? It makes no sense.

“If he were on drugs or in gangs or whatever, I don’t know what made him snap,” Valverde said.

What is clear is that nothing but coincidence and grief connects the two families as they prepare for funerals, nearly a week after their lives intersected at a Burger King outlet on West Holt Avenue.

An overflow crowd of mourners is expected to gather this evening and recite the Rosary with Rochin and her partner, Servando Martinez, at Sacred Heart Church.

Little Osvaldo Martinez will be buried Monday, the services paid for by an outpouring of donations to this family of humble means.

Servando Martinez polishes wheel rims for a living at an auto parts factory. Rochin has stayed home with her three boys because “I can’t imagine having someone else take care of them,” she said.

Immigrants from the Mexican state of Jalisco, they met in Huntington Park 11 years ago, moved together to Compton and left eight months ago for a one-bedroom Pomona apartment, hoping to escape gangs and crime and to be closer to Chino relatives.

Offers of Support

Family and friends have kept a vigil with the couple, crowding into their tiny living room decorated with 8-by-10 studio portraits of their boys, one with Osvaldo smiling next to Pooh Bear.

Neighbors brought in shoe boxes stuffed with dollar bills; others came with food.

A memorial fund at a Washington Mutual Bank branch in Pomona has collected $12,000, with donations coming from as far away as New York.

Parents at Kanyon Kids Preschool in nearby Chino posted a large condolence card at a makeshift memorial at the Burger King, parents signing for their children.

“When you have children of your own, you imagine what it would be like if it happened to us – the tremendous hurt, the pain,” said Blenda Johnston, the school’s director. “We just wanted to reach out in some way and extend a hug to the family,” Johnston said.

Rochin, eyes so swollen that she strains to keep them open, said that the stream of visitors has kept her occupied.

“But when we are alone, we are not well,” she said.

Martinez, who has not been able to work all week, thanked all those who “have been coming from far away, strangers, helping us morally, financially, emotionally.”

Rochin doesn’t think the older boys, Omar, 7, and Gerardo, 6, understand the meaning of death, even though they witnessed the shooting and stood over Osvaldo as he bled.

When the family visited the coroner’s office Thursday to claim the body, she said Omar asked, “Is this where they are going to revive him?”

Everything about Monday morning was a bit out of the ordinary, Rochin said. The children were home from school for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

She needed bottled water, but debated whether she really wanted to go to the store with three kids in tow.

But Rochin remembered that a sick neighbor needed asthma medicine. With Osvaldo in his stroller, they left on their errands, walking more than a mile to the strip mall.

Osvaldo, seeing the Burger King, started to cry for his favorite – chicken nuggets. Restaurant meals, even fast food, are a rare indulgence for the family.

But the jug of water she was carrying had grown heavy. The crying made her weary, and Rochin decided to take a rest and treat the boys to lunch.

‘I Heard a Firecracker’

She ordered burgers and the nuggets. The boys chose the table. She noticed two men sitting nearby. One looked toward them, but she didn’t give it a second thought.

“I sat down to eat and suddenly I saw him and I didn’t know where he came from,” she said.

“He was very close to us. I could feel him behind me. I wanted to turn around to see what he was doing and then I heard a firecracker.”

One gunshot from a small handgun entered the back of Osvaldo’s head and exited through his jaw. The gun, sheriff’s investigators said, was a .25-caliber Raven, an unregistered Saturday night special.

The rest of week has been a blur, she said, unable to describe the hours that followed and unable right now to extend forgiveness.

“He’s a monster,” she said. “When I think about him now, I remember seeing the face of the devil.”

A few minutes after Osvaldo was shot, John Moreno said, his phone rang. It was Christopher Contreras, his son’s friend.

“Danny lost it!” Contreras said.

Contreras described the killing, then told John Moreno that Daniel had tried to hand him the gun, saying, “Now you shoot me. If you are my brother, shoot me.”

Contreras ran away and was later arrested. Police released him Tuesday, saying he was only a witness and had no knowledge that Daniel Moreno was armed.

John Moreno raced to the Burger King and saw the commotion. Less than half a block away, his son had just been shot by Pomona police officers.

Police said Moreno refused orders to drop his weapon, and witnesses told investigators he shouted, “Shoot me, shoot me.” He moved toward officers, gun extended, and was shot, according to police.

It is not known whether he was under the influence of drugs when he shot Osvaldo. Coroner’s toxicology tests will be completed in a few weeks.

Moreno’s friends told investigators that he had a history of drug use, but Sgt. Bobby Taylor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide bureau said he could give no further details.

Moreno’s gang, The Fontana Kings, is “a tag-bang gang,” a mix of graffiti taggers and gang-bangers, Taylor said.

“His friends and close relatives can make all the excuses they want with this good-boy syndrome,” Taylor said.

Moreno apparently did not have a criminal record, according to Taylor. “But to us, he was a known gang-banger doing the things that gang-bangers do – terrorizing the neighborhood.”

Pastor Valverde is preparing a funeral service Tuesday for “the Danny that we knew” – a young man who had returned to church in December and recently pledged to Valverde to turn his life around.

The day before the shootings, Daniel Moreno had sat among Valverde’s congregation with his 7-year-old son, Danny Jr.

He had met the boy’s mother at the church when they were teenagers. They lived together for a time, then separated.

On Sunday night, Daniel told his family that he hoped to reunite with her.

Valverde titled his sermon “Ya no puede mas” – I can’t take it anymore. He preached that sometimes people chose suicide or drugs to escape their darkest moments, instead of choosing Christ.

Valverde offered his congregants a message of hope, and, to Valverde, it seemed to resonate with Daniel.

In their departing conversation, Daniel told him: “I heard it all, Brother Sam. That was all for me. I have to do what I have to do.”

Valverde saw him last smiling with his son and greeting others at the church door.

*

A fund has been established at Washington Mutual Bank to help pay for burial costs and counseling for the family of Osvaldo Martinez. The account number for the Martinez Fund is 4891544970. The bank’s Pomona branch is at (909) 623-2491

Good find Cray. I think I read about this article before but it didn't mention that dude was from TFK...RIP goes out to that lil kid.

I remember when this happen, it was some crazy shit, He had to really be high as hell to just flip like that.

From what I heard, he was super twacked out...yall know how these tweekers/fiends get when they coming down on that bullshit