A death in Orange County shatters California dreams

Insight on the News, Jan 2, 1995 by Chi Chi Sileo

Almost everyone in Orange County, Calif., knows what happened the night of Oct. 15, 1993, when two groups of teenagers -- nine Mexicans and about 20 whites -- met by chance at Calafia Beach Park in San Clemente. Two of the boys exchanged insults. The white teens say they decided to leave and got into their cars. The Mexicans claim the whites raced toward them as if to run them down. Tim Bright, one of the drivers, later admitted in court that that had been his intention.

As the four cars came at them, the Mexicans say they grabbed objects from the bed of a nearby pickup truck and began to throw them at the cars in self-defense. The cars sped away. Arturo Villalobos, at 17 the oldest of his group, urged his friends to go home, afraid the white teens would return and start a fight.

What the Mexicans didn't know was that something ghastly had occurred -- an event that forensics experts later would call a one-in-a-million chance. One object thrown by the Mexican boys -- a paint roller -- had shattered a car window and skewered the skull of 17-year-old Steve Woods. Woods was comatose for almost a month before he died.

During the early-morning hours of Oct. 16, a friend warned Villalobos that the police were looking for him. He briefly considered fleeing to Mexico but, says his father, Victor, "Arturo felt that he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide, and the right thing to do would be to stay and cooperate with the police."

According to Arturo Villalobos, lawenforcement officials initially told him that if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, none of his friends would be arrested. In fact, investigators for the defense maintained that the police told Arturo that his friends had fingered him -- a ruse used on each of the boys, who were interrogated separately. Villalobos pleaded guilty. Within hours, the eight other Mexican teens were arrested. Six were charged with conspiracy to commit murder -- and scheduled to be tried as adults. Three of the boys -- Hector Penuelas, Juan Perez Bonilla and Juan Alcocer -- since have been convicted of second-degree murder. They face prison terms of 15 years to life and will be sentenced in January. Rogelio Solis, 17, will be tried next.

But the case of the San Clemente Six, as the Mexican teens are known, will not fade away. To anti-immigration groups, the death of Woods is a vivid example of the evils of unchecked immigration. On the eve of November's election, Woods' mother, Kathy, who had been aligned with anti-immigration groups before the death of her son, called a press conference to declare that her son would still be alive if the Mexicans had stayed in their country. (The status of the boys and their families -- whether they are legal or illegal residents of the United States -- is unclear and still is being investigated.) She also permitted the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, a cosponsor of the state's Proposition 187, to use X-ray photographs of her son's injured head in campaign literature. (Proposition 187 was passed, but the state is ruling on its constitutionality.)

To civil-rights groups such as Los Amigos of Orange County and the League of United Latin American Citizens, however, the San Clemente Six case represents anti-immigration sentiment run amok. "This couldn't have come at a worse time, with Proposition 187 right smack in the middle of it," says attorney Gene Dorney, who represented Alcocer. "How much it influenced the prosecution and the jury, I don't know, but in California, it's certainly the case that people perceive immigrants as a big problem." Arturo Montez, urban affairs director for the California chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, puts it more bluntly: "They were looking for a Latino Willie Horton, and they found him."

Critical observers of the case have questioned police procedure in evidence gathering. No fingerprints were found on the paint roller that killed Woods. There is no indication that the Mexicans harbored any enmity against the teenager, despite that he was known to dislike Mexicans. And investigators for the Orange County Crime Lab demonstrated in court that they could easily puncture a slab of drywall by throwing a paint roller against it. In other words, say critics, a freak accident has been treated as a deliberate attack.

"People say, 'Well, if the boys felt threatened by the white boys in their cars, why didn't they file a police report afterwards?'" says Dorney. "But to say that indicates a profound lack of misunderstanding of others, an inability to see things from another's viewpoint. Sure, that's what you and I might have done, but keep this in mind: These boys speak very little English, they probably don't know the first thing about a police report, they come from a culture where people have a real fear and mistrust of the police. How can you expect them to react the way we would?" Others note that none of the white teens, who share responsibility for the altercation, were charged.