![]() ![]() “Guns are so easy to get,” he said, noting that he possessed at least 50 unregistered guns during his gang years. In his 10 years living in West Covina he has not heard a single gunshot, but that doesn’t change the fact that guns are all around, he said. He found God and Catholicism while in prison and chose to leave his “gangbanging” years behind, moving to West Covina to start a new, safer life with his wife and kids. and was a gang member for 16 years, he said. “I’m shocked maybe because it happened in our area, but not shocked that it happened to the church.”įlores himself has an intimate understanding of gun violence as he grew up in East L.A. We know a lot of people have a lot of hatred in them,” he said. “I’m not shocked, because of the evils in the world nowadays. West Covina resident and devout Catholic Johnny Flores, shared a similar outlook. “The reality is there is no playbook for what our communities have gone through.” – Henry Lo, Monterey Park city councilmember John’s Vianney in Hacienda Heights, but was well known and loved in Catholic congregations throughout Los Angeles. ![]() David O’Connell, who was killed yesterday nearby, in Hacienda Heights on Sunday, February 19, 2023.(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)Īt the time of his death, O’Connell led the parish at St. Father Albert Avenido, of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Covina, leads a street mass in memory of LA Archdiocese Bishop Rev. “I thought it was a bad joke,” said local resident Patricia Maravilla, referring to the moment she heard the news about O’Connell’s death. Just as Monterey Park was shaken, the county’s vast Roman Catholic community and local residents are reeling from O’Connell’s sudden and violent death. County Sheriff’s deputies arrested suspect Carlos Medina, whose wife was O’Connell’s housekeeper, at their Torrance home at 9 a.m. O’Connell was shot and killed in his Hacienda Heights home around 1 p.m. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Mourners for the Monterey Park mass shooting victims join a vigil at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Wednesday, Jan. The gunman, Huu Can Tran, shot himself after being circled by law enforcement the following day. The Monterey Park mass shooting took place at Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Jan. “It seems so senseless and so mind boggling as to why this happened.” “I am deeply saddened and disturbed that someone so beloved in his community was taken away, and it does remind me of the 11 people in Monterey Park,” said Monterey Park Councilmember Henry Lo, who just weeks ago as the city’s mayor was helping his community face the tragedy of a massacre. Their impact runs deep in the quiet suburbs of Monterey Park and Hacienda Heights and in the region’s shaken Catholic community. The unprecedented, back-to-back spate of gun violence in the early weeks of a new year has given the community mourning whiplash. The San Gabriel Valley is known as a safe and even sleepy area, where people come to raise their families in peace, but in the span of less than a month, the region was the site of a mass homicide and the fatal shooting of O’Connell, a beloved L.A. 27, Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell attended a memorial Mass for one of the 11 people who were killed at a dance studio in Monterey Park.
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