Teenager’s Deadly Rampage Stuns Relatives and Friends

Eva Veronica Diaz Alvarado Gonzalez, her friends and co-workers say, was vivacious and thoughtful, an indulgent mother who deeply loved--and worried about--her teenage son.

She and his dad, Rudolfo Alvarado, had moved Renzo Alvarado from school to school, hoping for a better fit, and she fretted aloud about the kinds of youths he and his 16-year-old half brother were hanging out with near their apartment in Hyde Park, in the southwest corner of Los Angeles.

Recently, Renzo had begun working two nights a week at Feast from the East, the small, busy Chinese restaurant on the Westside where his mother had been a cashier for more than 10 years. She had hoped it would give him something productive to do, especially during these past few weeks when he was on break from year-round classes at Los Angeles High School. And restaurant owner Suzanne Toji said Thursday that she had been happy to hire him.

“‘We knew she was having problems with him, but he showed us nothing of that here,” said Toji. “He was polite and personable, a good worker.” She said she has known the family since Renzo was 3 and his father worked as a parking lot attendant at the restaurant before eventually becoming manager of a fast-food chain eatery in South Pasadena.

That’s why Toji and her other longtime employees are having trouble accepting what they learned first from police investigators, then from news reports:

Sometime after 6 a.m. Tuesday, Renzo killed his mother, 36, his father, 51, and his 4-year-old brother, Victor, before turning the .22-caliber handgun on himself, police said. Earlier reports that Veronica was Renzo’s stepmother and that the 4-year-old was his half brother were incorrect.

All the victims, each in different parts of their three-bedroom apartment, had been shot once in the head.

Renzo’s 10-year-old sister and his half brother, who had lived with his mother in Guatemala before moving in with his father’s family a few months ago, discovered the carnage when they returned home around 9 a.m, apparently to retrieve a sweater the girl had forgotten when she left for school. They had left the house three hours earlier.

On Thursday, police released new details as they continued their investigation into the shootings, which they believe may have been sparked when Renzo and his father argued over the boy’s use of marijuana in the home.

Homicide Det. Richard Marks said officers responding to the youngster’s 911 call noticed a strong smell of gas fumes. Investigators found that all four burners on the stove had been opened and that a candle stood on the floor beside Renzo’s body. It had been taken from its package and lighted, but the flame had apparently gone out before the gas could reach it and cause an explosion.

“It could have been a whole lot worse than it was,” Marks said.

Those who knew Renzo say they cannot believe he was troubled enough to have done such a thing.

“We keep telling ourselves, ‘It can’t be Renzo,’ ” Toji said.

Most of the restaurant’s employees knew the family. Graciela Reyes, in fact, lived in the same building, and she and Veronica Diaz, as the restaurant workers knew her, rode the bus to work together.

Reyes said she knocked on the family’s door at the usual time, 7:50 a.m. Tuesday, but got no answer. She thought it strange but went on to work alone, only learning later what had happened from police.

She blinked back tears at work Wednesday, too distraught to talk much.

Back at the family’s apartment, relatives spent the day sorting through the victims’ belongings.

“He was a very nice guy,” said Ceydi Mendoza, Renzo’s cousin. “He loved his mother a lot. He loved his family.”

“He wasn’t an aimless, violent person,” said another cousin, Carlos Urrea. “You have to think about the area where he lives and how hard things are around here. But he wasn’t like that.”

At Crenshaw High School, which Renzo had attended briefly, counselors were trying to help shocked students cope with the news.

“Kids have been crying,” said Celia Mendez, an aide who spoke with Renzo and his half brother often. “Renzo was a nice kid, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that he would do this, especially to his little brother.”

Assistant Principal Douglass Pozzo remembered Renzo as a quiet, clean-cut boy with glasses. He was a student at the school for about a year before leaving for another campus late last year, he said.

“He was a kid who didn’t go to class,” he said. “He was never nasty or mean. But he wasn’t successful here.”

He said Renzo never had disciplinary problems at the school, other than his frequent absences.

“School was just not his thing,” he said. “You never saw much of him, but he was smart. He wasn’t a dumb kid.”

Jasmine Nunez, girlfriend of the surviving half brother, said she became friends with Renzo two years ago and spent a lot of time with the teenagers. Renzo had a girlfriend, she said, whose name he had tattooed on his arm.

She recalled Renzo as a good kid who fell into a crowd that dabbled in marijuana and crack.

Renzo’s father was trying to set him straight and disapproved of his smoking marijuana with his friends at their apartment, she said. Nunez added that the night before the family was found dead, Renzo had argued with his father about his friends.

“The father didn’t want him to have those kinds of friends,” she said in Spanish. “That night, his friends came over and his father made them leave.”

Police said Renzo was 16, but friends and relatives said he was 15.

Renzo’s sister is a student at Beethoven Elementary School, where she attends special classes and is well-liked by her 13 classmates, according to Principal Margaret Thomas.

At the restaurant, friends and co-workers had set up a small memorial: a photo of Veronica and Rudolfo dancing and a vase of flowers. They were taking up a collection for the girl.

“We worry about what will happen to her,” said Toji. “Veronica was so happy with the school she was in. She was doing really well.”