Church Deacon Killed at Church by Youth Gang Member
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A Church Deacon was shot and killed after trying to stop a young female gang member from vandalizing the church. I know it is hard to believe that in these days and times, even churches, we must equip houses of worship with armed guards to protect their parishioners.
Somebody please tell me, what in the world is wrong with a lot of our youth today, they just have no value for life, respect for their families and many for even themselves. Jesus HELP THEM!
By: LA Times
Brought by his parents from Guatemala as a small boy, Andres Ordonez’s dream was to get his legal papers squared away, become the American he always felt he was and then a police officer.
The 25-year-old deacon at Iglesia Principe de Paz, a small evangelical church on Beverly Boulevard, had been a police Explorer for the Los Angeles Police Department, said his father-in-law Cirilo Mendez. He described Ordonez as a sweet-natured, shy kid who became a serious-minded, devout young man. Ordonez was a restaurant cook, but with a 1-year-old son and his wife Ana, 20, three months pregnant, he wanted to secure their future.
“He wanted to make sure his friend there wouldn’t lack for anything,” Mendez, 45, said, motioning to his grandson, who was capering about the lobby of the LAPD’s Rampart Station. “He wanted to be a cop since he was a boy. He wanted to serve the community.”
On Thursday, Mendez, his wife and their daughter Ana appealed for the public’s help in finding the killer of Ordonez, who was shot Sunday along with another parishioner, after interrupting a woman vandalizing the wall of the church. A gang member stepped out of a car and fired at the two men, mortally wounding Ordonez in the parking lot as churchgoers knelt or stood around him, praying.
“He has been in this country since he was just a boy. From the bottom of his heart, he was American,” Mendez said. “He felt American. His wife was an American citizen. The life he was going to make was going to be made here.”
Ordonez’s wife said she was helping to prepare food after the Sunday evening service when her husband stepped outside from the singing and praying in the church to check on her.
“I wasn’t feeling really well that day, so he just went outside and asked me how I was,” she said. “Then he heard some noises.”
Just around the corner, on Reno Street, another parishioner was asking the female tagger to stop scrawling her gang’s name on the church wall. She shoved him, causing him to stumble. Ordonez and another parishioner were shot when they went to help.
Ana Mendez said she can’t stop thinking about the child who would never meet her father.
“I’m waiting for something beautiful my husband left me,” she said.
As for Nehemias Andres, the son left bereft of his father by a gunman, Mendez said he was far too young to understand what had happened to him.
“He asked for his dad just yesterday,” she said. “I just try to explain to him that he’s up in heaven. I just point up there and the only thing he does is look and say to his daddy, ‘bye, bye.’”
Before he died, Andres Ordonez had planned a “big fiesta” for his son, who in two months will turn 2. Just before the family spoke to the media, the boy rolled a black-and-white toy police car on the smooth floor of the LAPD station.
Cirilo Mendez, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Veracruz, said he remembered his son-in-law as a small boy attending church with his parents. Unlike the Mendez family, he said, Ordonez was timid and quiet. But once he started dating his daughter, he said, a more gregarious side of him would sometimes peek out. He loved soccer, following Real Madrid and Barcelona, and even rooting for the Mexican national team with his wife’s family. Whatever made them happy made him happy, his father-in-law said.
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