A Latino street gang waged a racist campaign to eliminate black people from a Southern California city through attempted murders and other crimes, according to federal racketeering indictments unsealed Thursday.
Five indictments charged a total of 147 members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang, and federal and local agencies arrested 63 of them by early Thursday, U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said at a news conference. He called it "the largest gang takedown in United States history" but did not elaborate.
The indictments detail attempted murder, kidnapping, firearms, narcotics and other charges related to attacks by the gang, which is predominantly Latino and mainly operates in Hawaiian Gardens, a city of about 15,000 in southeastern Los Angeles County.
"(Varrio Hawaiian Gardens) gang members take pride in their racism and often refer to the VHG Gang as the `Hate Gang,"' the main indictment states. "VHG gang members have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African-Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes against African-Americans."
The indictment alleges a string of attacks on black residents, including a shooting into a home with eight people inside. The indictment does not say if anyone was hit. In another instance, two gang members allegedly chased a black man, yelled a racist epithet at him and then beat him with a garden rake. The same man was later repeatedly stabbed by two gang members, according to the indictment, which charges them with his attempted murder.
According to 2000 census data, the latest available, Hawaiian Gardens was roughly 73 percent Hispanic and 4 percent black. The indictments mark at least the second time in less than two years that federal authorities have accused Latino gang members of attacking black residents because of their race. Local officials have tried to downplay racial tensions.
The investigation of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang began in June 2005 after the murder of Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Luis Gerardo "Jerry" Ortiz. Jose Luis Orozco, a member of the gang, was sentenced to death in 2007 for the killing.
Ortiz, 35, died as he searched for Orozco, who had shot and wounded a man while he did yard work. Orozco was later found guilty of attempted murder in that case.
"Following the murder of Deputy Ortiz, the Sheriff's Department sought federal and local assistance to help destroy the Hawaiian Gardens gang," O'Brien said.
SAN DIEGO -- The bodies of four young people who reportedly crossed the border to party have been found strangled, beaten and stabbed to death in Tijuana. The bodies of two men and two women were found early Saturday morning, according to a news release from the Tijuana State Attorney's Office.
Their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, according to Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California. Tijuana authorities have identified the victims as Brianna Hernandez Aguilera, 19; Carmen Jimenez Ramos Chavez, 20; Oscar Jorge Garcia Cota, 23; and Luis Antonio Games, Jr., 21. Hernandez and Ramos were graduates of Chula Vista High School. Cota attended Southwest High School, and Games Jr. is a Mexican national.
The bodies showed signs of torture and were wrapped in blankets, according to Tijuana authorities. Three of the victims had been strangled, and one had suffered head wounds, said a source in the Attorney General's Office. All four were covered with blankets inside a 1995 burgundy van with California license plates in a residential community known as Fraccionamiento Valle Dorado in eastern Tijuana. The women had been reported missing by their parents, said Arsenault, the Chula Vista lieutenant.
The group reportedly traveled to Tijuana to party in the popular tourist destination Avenida Revolucion. Authorities are said to be investigating whether the killings could be connected to a relationship between one of the victims and someone serving prison time in the U.S. on drug charges. Relatives of one of the victims told Chula Vista police that they knew drug traffickers, and that one of the women had cocaine in her system. Those reports were under investigation.
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