Get our soldiers out NOW... of L.A.!
 

very sad;

Posted on Thu, Sep. 08, 2005


Parents of LA County sailor slain on leave plead for public help

SOLVEJ SCHOU

Associated Press


COMMERCE, Calif. - The parents of a Navy sailor slain while on leave from the war in Iraq pleaded Thursday for the public's help to find the gunman who also shot the man's pregnant wife in the stomach and wounded his teenage brother.

"I need justice for my son," said Jorge Hipolito, who sobbed at a press conference surrounded by video stills of the shooting. "I have too much pain."

Osiel Hipolito, 20, was shopping for a television Saturday at a strip mall near Compton with his 16-year-old brother and 21-year-old wife, Lizveth Valdivia, when two men confronted him, said sheriff's Capt. Ray Peavy.

"They were looking for someone to terrorize, to murder," Peavy said.

The gunman shot Hipolito twice with a semiautomatic handgun and then turned to shoot Valdivia directly in the abdomen, Peavy told reporters at the Los Angeles County sheriff's station in Commerce.

Hipolito was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Valdivia, who was eight months pregnant, gave birth to a girl the same day by Caesarean section, said her mother, Bertha Valdivia.

The baby was wounded in the leg but was in stable condition Thursday.

"My daughter lost a lot of blood and the baby, too," Bertha Valdivia said.

Lizveth Valdivia and Hipolito's brother also were in stable condition.

Hipolito, assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Germantown docked at San Diego, was to have reported back to his base Saturday, Bertha Valdivia said.

He was scheduled to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty in February 2006.

"He had so many dreams," including becoming a police officer or firefighter, said his mother, Sofia Hipolito.

Hipolito was a police Explorer at the Compton sheriff's station before joining the Navy in 2003.

"This guy was fighting for our country," Peavy said.

I believe this is the third soldier from LA being killed after coming back from Iraq, very sad. Terrorism is very presence in our inner cities.

Actually, Compton isnt an inner city, but I dont know why anyone would be shopping there.

On the rare occasions I have to go to Compton, I am totally on alert, and would never take my kids or wife there.

You are right there is no inner city in Los Angeles, that's why the misery of Compton is so far away from other Los Angeles residents.

Oh, I think LA has an inner city, its just that compton is an outlaying suburb, actually closer to long beach than LA city. It actually used to be a nice neighborhood, the ghettos of Watts drifted south to Carson, and now Compton.