Long Beach Man Slain in Apparent Gang-Related Shooting
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Ronnie Rodriguez’s only transgression may have been that he was from the wrong neighborhood.
As the 18-year-old man talked with friends on a Long Beach street early Sunday, police say, he was confronted by two assailants asking a question that has sparked much gang-related bloodshed over the years: “Where are you from?”
Rodriguez was apparently unable to come up with the correct answer to the challenge--one often invoked by turf-oriented gang members. He was shot in the head. He was dead by the time officers arrived on the scene, in the 3000 block of Fashion Avenue, shortly before 1 a.m.
A Long Beach Police Department spokesman, Officer J. Braff, said Sunday that detectives were still investigating. But the two attackers appeared to be Latino gang members, he said. “On the outside,” Braff said, “that’s what it looks like.”
Anyone with information is asked to call detectives at: (562) 570-7247.
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