UPDATE: A second 14-year-old has been arrested for murdering Manuel Raul Orozco (updates throughout) . . .
Manuel Raul Orozco, 17, was just steps from his Santa Ana home about 5:30 p.m. June 22 when he was approached by two younger teens on bicycles.
A gun was whipped out, a shot was fired into Orozco's upper torso, and there–near the same Willits and South Sullivan streets corner where Lincoln Elementary School and Friendship Park are located–Orozco took his last breath.
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One 14-year-old boy was arrested at his Santa Ana home Friday on suspicion of murdering Orozco. A second was arrested on the same charge at his Stockton home by U.S. Marshals on Tuesday. Neither has been identified because of their ages.
But they have been identified another way: police say both belonged to the same street gang. The Stockton teen had been reported a runaway by his parents, according to cops.
So, while Orozco had no apparent gang ties nor criminal record, his death is being classified as the fourth gang-related murder in Santa Ana this year.
Take note of that, Santa Ana: not only are your gang-bangers getting younger, but they are having no problem getting ahold of guns–even at age 14, even as runaways.
It's going to be a long summer.
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.