Reputed Mexican Mafia member wounded, another man killed in L.A. County shooting

A reputed member of the Mexican Mafia was wounded in a shooting Saturday that left a second man dead in Los Angeles County, authorities said.

At 11 p.m., Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded to a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall on Valley View Avenue in La Mirada, where they found two men with gunshot wounds in the parking lot, Lt. Steven De Jong said.

Eric Ortiz, 34, died from gunshot wounds to the chest, De Jong said. The lieutenant declined to name the surviving victim, who remained hospitalized in critical condition. A law enforcement source who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly identified him as Juan Garcia, a Mexican Mafia member known as “Topo.”

De Jong said a group of gang members who were not veterans had rented the VFW hall for some type of gathering. Most attendees had left by the time police arrived, and De Jong said his detectives have “no suspect information whatsoever.”

Originally from the Florencia-13 gang, Garcia, 63, served more than 17 years in federal prison for racketeering. He was convicted of inciting a riot at the Lompoc prison in 2003.

That melee started after prisoners brewed up a batch of contraband alcohol known as pruno, according to a law enforcement report reviewed by The Times. A lieutenant was escorting an inmate to his office for a breathalyzer test when Garcia stepped in front of him.

“You are not taking anybody,” he told the lieutenant, then shoved him. “Den les en la madre,” Garcia said to the other inmates in the module, which prison officials translated as an order to assault the guards.

Eight inmates attacked the lieutenant, punching, kicking and choking him, the report says. As he and about 40 other staff members tried to escape the cellblock, Garcia demanded that one of the officers apologize to him.

The officer hesitated. An inmate punched him in the face. “I’m sorry,” he told Garcia, who let then let the staff leave, according to the report. The document says they carried with them a Muslim chaplain who had been beaten unconscious and a food services worker who had been attacked with a broomstick.

The cellblock emptied of prison officials, Garcia broke all the glass in the module and sprayed a fire extinguisher, the report says. With the help of other inmates, he barricaded the entryway with washing and vending machines, then proceeded to smash all of the televisions, microwaves, sprinkler systems and ice machines. Other inmates also beat a prisoner who did not participate in the melee, according to the report.

The associate warden issued riot gear and masks to the guards, who quelled the riot with tear gas, pepper spray, and “flash stun” and “multi blast” grenades, the document says. Twenty-eight staff members and four inmates, including Garcia, suffered injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to a hernia and serious head trauma.

“This was a show of power on the part of inmate Garcia,” an investigator wrote in the report.

After pleading guilty to the crime of rioting at a federal facility, Garcia was sentenced in 2005 to another six years on top of his racketeering term.

A year after his release in 2020, Los Angeles Police Department officers were patrolling 64th Street in South L.A. when they saw a silver Volkswagen Passat double-parked on the wrong side of the street, according to a probation report.

They saw the driver, Garcia, hand a gun to a man standing next to the car, the report says. The man took off running. When the police caught up to him, the 31-year-old member of Florencia-13 seemed “afraid to answer my questions and denied knowing Garcia,” the arresting officer wrote in a report.

Convicted of possessing a gun as a felon, Garcia was sent back to federal prison in 2022 to serve 15 months. Before he was sentenced, Steve Quinonez, chief executive of the Florence Firestone Community Organization, wrote in a letter to the judge that Garcia volunteered for his group.

A “great leader with a big heart,” Garcia mentored young people not to take “the wrong path in life,” he wrote.

De Jong, the sheriff’s lieutenant, asked that anyone with information about Saturday’s shooting contact detectives at (323) 890-5500.