Garden Grove Police have been dealing with guns, gangs, an attempted murder and public storage unit thefts the past couple days.
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Navel Gazing reported yesterday about the gang injunction a judge signed against a Garden Grove criminal street gang, reportedly the Hard Times gang.
A turf war between gangs in Garden Grove and Anaheim resulted in four
shootings, two assaults and much gang tagging in Garden Grove,
according to Garden Grove Police Lt. Travis Whitman. Following a probe led by Investigator Pat Gildea of that force, 65 officers from Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Orange County Probation served search warrants at seven residences in Garden Grove and Anaheim around 5:30 a.m. Thursday.
Six alleged gang members were arrested and two rifles, five handguns, four shotguns, two assault rifles and more
than 1,000 rounds of ammunition of various types were seized. “Investigators believe that some of the weapons seized were used in the
previous Garden Grove shootings,” Whitman said.
Those held and the nature of the charges against them were identified as:
Edward Argueta, 26, Garden Grove, weapons
Ysrael Garza, 28, Garden Grove, weapons
Fernando Garza, 29, Garden Grove, weapons
Oscar Padilla, 18, Garden Grove, weapons
Gregorio Pinto, 27, Garden Grove, warrant
Unidentified adult male, no age or city released, warrant
At about 7:10 p.m. Thursday, Garden
Grove officers were dispatched to the 12400 block of
shooting. A unnamed 17-year-old Garden Grove boy was found in an alleyway, nursing a single gunshot wound. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was later listed in stable condition.
Piecing together what happened at the scene, officers discovered the shooting victim and two others were standing outside waiting for a ride when a 16- to 18-year-old Latino approached and asked the boy where he was from and pointed a handgun at him. A fight broke out, and in the struggle the gun went off. The gunman, who was wearing dark clothing, then fled. Police consider this a gang-related crime. Contact Investigator Vi at (714) 741-5874 if you have information.
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As all this is going on, Garden Grove and Huntington Beach are dealing with a series of crimes where thieves rent a unit at a public storage lot, break into the yard's other units emptying the contents and put new padlocks on the burgled spaces so the rental yard has no idea crimes occurred. The sticky fingered then store the loot in the unit they rented until moving on to the next storage yard.
“You may be the victim of a crime and not currently know it,” Whitman says. “If you
haven't visited your storage unit in the last month, we recommend you do
so.”
Following legwork by detectives from both agencies, truckloads of suspected stolen property have been recovered, much of which has already been
returned to identified victims, according to Whitman. Police still hope to reunite owners with a large comic
book collection, sports memorabilia, china, cooking supplies, antique items, a radio, telescopes and medical equipment. If your property has been stolen from a storage unit in Orange or Los Angeles counties within the past year, contact Garden Grove Det. Paul Danielson at (714) 741-5815.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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