Police Shooting of Boy, 14, Sparks Unrest : Crime: Disturbance in Montecito Heights followed death of teen-ager who authorities said had been pointing a gun at them. Some witnesses dispute official accounts.

By JEFF LEEDS

July 31, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Police in riot gear broke up a bottle-throwing crowd that gathered Saturday night after an officer shot and killed a 14-year-old youth who pointed a semiautomatic pistol at police in Montecito Heights, authorities said.

Nearly 100 officers were summoned to push back the throng after the 9:40 p.m. shooting, Sgt. Rich Groller said. Police arrested three men; no one was seriously injured.

Neighborhood residents began chanting “We want justice!” after uniformed Los Angeles police anti-gang investigators shot Antonio Gutierrez, 14.

As the officer and his partner answered a call that an armed man was disturbing the peace, police said, they spotted Gutierrez crossing the street carrying a pistol, Groller said.

When officers stopped to investigate, the teen-ager turned and pointed the gun at them, Groller said. Believing that the teen-ager was about to shoot, the officer fired six shots, hitting Gutierrez in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police recovered a Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol, but relatives and friends who witnessed the shooting said Gutierrez was carrying a flashlight, not a gun, when the officer fired.

“They murdered my son,” said the youth’s mother, Marianna Gutierrez, speaking through an interpreter.

An 18-year-old who asked that his name not be printed said he had arranged for Gutierrez to carry the Tec-9 pistol to another teen-ager. But when Gutierrez saw police, said the 18-year-old, he tossed the pistol away. “He didn’t even know how to use it,” he added. “Yet.”

According to some residents and the youth’s friends, who milled about the sidewalk near the shooting scene Sunday morning, Gutierrez had crossed the street to fetch a cigarette for a friend of his mother’s and was on his way back when police sped up the street with headlights off. Without identifying himself, they said, the officer driving the car shot the youth several times, handcuffed him, then shot him again as he lay on the ground.

“They didn’t even say ‘Freeze,’ ” said family friend and witness Julie Noriega, 23. Gutierrez’s mother and other relatives said they were less than 20 feet away from where he was shot.

Nicknamed “Trouble” by his friends, Gutierrez had faced off with police five months ago, his mother said, when officers accused him of spray-painting a wall. On Sunday, about 20 of his friends stood across from where the youth died. One, using black spray paint, wrote “Trouble Rest in Peace” on the wall.

Mourners lit red and green candles on the sidewalk early Sunday morning. Others set out vases of pink and yellow roses.

Rita Martinez, 56, said gang violence had long plagued the neighborhood. “My house is full of bullet holes from gang members,” she said, pointing out a shattered windowpane as she watched the mourners. “This was something different.”

Tensions between Gutierrez’s neighbors and friends and police heated up within an hour of the shooting. When officers in riot helmets began marching in a line to force the crowd of 150 up the street, several protesters began tossing rocks and bottles, authorities said.

“It looked like it was a war zone,” said Martha Moreno, 29, whose husband, Arnold, was arrested for disturbing the peace. The couple were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary and their son’s third birthday when they heard shots. “They see us all as gang member lowlifes. That’s not right.”