Gang Shoot-Out Bullet Kills Woman, 82 : Buena Park Neighborhood Is Terrified

An 82-year-old Buena Park woman was fatally shot late Saturday night by a stray bullet that pierced the locked front door of her home in what police said was gunfire from gang members.

The victim was Cornelia Mitchell.

The target of the gunfire was Arrizon Clemente, 17, of Buena Park, a member of the Los Coyotes gang. As he fled past Mitchell’s duplex in the 7500 block of Ninth Street, he was wounded in the arm by one of up to eight shots fired from a pickup truck carrying rival Eastside gang members.

Mitchell was sitting in her living room about 11:30 p.m. when she was apparently drawn to her front door by shouted insults between the two gangs at Ninth Street and Kingman Avenue. She was felled by the bullet in her chest before she could unlock the door, police said.

Died at UCI Medical Center

Next-door neighbor Margaret Gaber, 80, checked on her friend after hearing the shots and found Mitchell lying unconscious near the door. She died two hours later at UCI Medical Center during surgery.

Lt. Tony Kelly said Clemente, who has been wounded “several times before” and “was no stranger to us,” was released from a nearby hospital less than two hours after he was shot.

He “cooperated with police,” Kelly said, but no suspects have been arrested. Police also have not identified the type or caliber of weapon used.

The shootings left residents of the older middle-class neighborhood--which is west of Beach Boulevard, north of the Riverside Freeway and just a block from Buena Park police headquarters--frightened by what they say is escalating gang activity.

Neighbors who said they had moved from Los Angeles to escape such violence huddled in driveways and stood talking through screen doors Sunday afternoon. A 15-year-old boy recalled turning out his home’s lights and crawling room to room during the gunfire.

Many were grief-stricken over the loss of their white-haired and spunky neighbor, who was born and raised in Buena Park and once raised chickens at nearby Knott’s Berry Farm and still delivered hot meals to the elderly infirm.

A neighbor who identified herself only as Helen said: “I’ve known her nine years; such a sweet lady, she was. Did you see the bullet hole in the door? So tiny and it took her life. . . . I miss seeing her in her garden already.”

Her voice broke. “To live that long and then be murdered. . . . “

According to police and witnesses, this is what happened:

Mitchell had changed into bed clothes and sat down in a living room recliner with a sliced peach when a cacophony of insults erupted outside her corner duplex.

The oldest daughter in one of Buena Park’s original families, Mitchell had never married and lived alone, said her sister, Edna McMullen.

Mitchell and an 85-year-old friend named Tina exchanged phone calls each morning and before retiring each night, Gaber said. Saturday night was no different, she said.

Outside, a Honda sedan pulled up across the street from Mitchell’s home, its engine idling. In the front seats were two teen-aged girls; riding in back was Clemente. Police say he was not carrying a weapon.

The occupants of the Honda had stopped to speak with four boys in a white Mustang parked directly beside Mitchell’s home on Kingman Avenue.

Police said a small, brown pickup truck then passed the cars as it traveled perpendicularly to Kingman, east on Ninth Street. Insults were exchanged between Clemente and four to six occupants in the truck, police said.

When the truck made a U-turn on Ninth and headed back toward the two cars, Clemente got out of the Honda “to see whether they were going to have a fistfight,” Kelly said. As the truck approached Mitchell’s house, a passenger leaned across the driver and began firing out that window of the pickup.

Ran Away From Honda

Clemente “decided to run for cover” and headed away from the Honda--”which took him right in front of Mitchell’s door,” Kelly said.

“The random round is what hit (her) door,” he said.

A 15-year-old boy whose mother would not allow his name to be used said: “I heard a scream, and then some shots.” He turned off all the lights at his friend’s home across the street from his, and they huddled below the windows.

“It was two shots--bam! bam!--and then four more faster ones--bam-bam-bam-bam! I was scared, but not that scared.”

When the gunfire began, a man in the neighborhood made the first call to police. Gaber said she at once ran to her kitchen to telephone Mitchell. After 10 rings, Gaber ran out her back door to Mitchell’s, using a key given her by Mitchell to enter when her knocks went unanswered.

“I was so scared and shook up. There was no blood,” Gaber said. “She had never got to the door.”

Mitchell’s glasses had fallen off when she tumbled to the floor, Gaber said.

“I’ll sure miss her,” she said. “I’m not going to stay here; this neighborhood’s got so bad.”

In the words of Helen, the neighborhood has “gone to the Devil.”

That was a common theme among the residents of the hodgepodge collection of new two-story apartments and 1920s-vintage bungalows. One woman, her three children clinging to her hands and ankles, said she regularly sees young gang members with guns tucked in their back waistband.

Several weeks ago on a nearby street, members of the same two rival gangs--the principal ones in Buena Park--were shot, one fatally.

Friends said Mitchell complained that the decline was caused by disregard for the rights of others. She chided youths who trampled her lawn instead of using the sidewalk, often chasing them away. She reported to police about the teen-agers who gathered on the curb outside her home because they played loud music from their car stereos or portable radios.

Mitchell had certainly seen her share of trouble, said neighbor Rosa Ito, 31. She and Mitchell recently watched a teen-age youth pick up one of Mitchell’s trash cans and bash out all the windows of a car parked in front of her garden.

“He knew we were watching him,” Ito said. “He looked right at us. Jo called police and reported it. She could see the people with no respect for anybody or anything slowly moving in here. It bothered her.”

One woman said she had moved to the neighborhood in September from Los Angeles to get away from gang violence.

“These kids have to live here and go to school here, and if these are gangs, you never know about retaliation. . . . There’s the police department right there and this is a small little community. I never thought I would face this stuff here.”

Helen added: “Everyone is going to have steel bars on their doors and windows soon. The trash goes out before dark anymore.”

Behind the duplex she shared with Gaber, in her garden of oranges, asparagus, tomatoes, nectarines and roses, Mitchell would spend nearly every morning--early--fertilizing and watering. She frequently shared her home-grown produce with neighbors.

Besides gardening Mitchell spent many hours participating in a program known as Meals on Wheels, in which volunteers deliver hot meals to the elderly. Gaber said Mitchell was also very active in her church down the street.

She was born and raised and died in Buena Park, where one of her four brothers still owns a machine shop, Mitchell Bros., a few miles from the duplex.

Her sister said Mitchell’s death was announced at Sunday services by her pastor, and “there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”

Buena Park police said the fatal gang shooting of an 82-year-old woman late Saturday night happened this way:

1. Honda stops on Kingman Avenue at Ninth Street. Passengers, including Arrizon Clemente, talk with friends in car parked across street.

2. Pickup traveling east on Ninth Street, with Eastside gang members aboard, passes Kingman. Insults are exchanged between Clemente and youths in truck.

3. Truck passes shooting victim Cornelia Mitchell’s home and makes U-turn. Clemente runs from Honda. Passenger in truck fires six to eight shots as truck again passes Mitchell’s house.

4. One bullet wounds as he runs through Mitchell’s front yard. Another bullet pierces screen and front door of Mitchell’s home, hitting her in the chest.