June 17, 2013 -- It’ s been 15 years since his two sons were “shot and murdered” in Santa Monica, but when Bill Juarez sees a young man “wearing a hat the same way” an irrational hope springs.

“I still chase them down,” said Juarez, whose sons Michael and Anthony were not the intended targets when they were gunned down in a Lincoln Boulevard clothing store by two gang members on October 27, 1998.

“I have to look,” says Juarez, who lived with his sons in Central California. “I know it’s not, but you have to go out and look. This lasts forever. This lasts every day.”

Holding a picture of his sons, his daughter and his nephew -- all victims of violence in the usually quiet beachside city -- Juarez addressed a crowd of more than 100 Santa Monica residents gathered for a Vigil for Peace and Healing Sunday at the charred frame house where a shooting spree that claimed five victims began June 7.

Vigil for Peace and Healing (Photos by Lookout staff)

While gunman John Zawahri, 23, did not belong to a gang, his murderous rampage began in the Pico Neighborhood, where most of the City’s 42 gang-related homicides since 1998 have taken place.

The number could rise to 43, if the June 11 fatal shooting of Gil Verastegui, 29, in the violence-prone neighborhood is determined to be gang-related after three gang members were arrested last week.

“Many families have been affected by violence for many years,” said Oscar de la Torre, interim executive director of the Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC), which co-sponsored the vigil with Saint Anne's Catholic Church and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE).

“The pain which comes from violence is permanent,” said de la Torre, a School Board member. “We want to bring that awareness. This is a permanent pain that families feel.”

After sage leaves were burnt, white doves released, candles lit and testimonies made, the crowd wound its way from the cul de sac where Zawahri killed his father, Samir, 55, and his brother, Christopher, 24, to the scene of other Pico Neighborhood shootings.

They stopped at Virginia Park, where Miguel Martin was shot to death in 2006, and near where Preston Brumfield was fatally assaulted in 2008, and where Juarez’s nephew, Richard Juarez, was shot and killed in November 2009.

They proceeded to Calvary Baptist Church, near the home of Arminda Lopez, whose son, Eddie Lopez, a popular Santa Monica High School student who was not affiliated with gangs, was shot and killed.

Arminda Lopez( right)

“There is still a strong pain that no one can remove,” she told the crowd in Spanish before the march. “We are losing innocent lives. I don’t want this to happen to others.”

And, finally, they marched to the alley near 16th Street and Michigan Avenue, where Verastegui was killed and another young man seriously injured after being shot by a suspect who got out of a blue Infiniti before approaching the two victims on foot and firing.

Before the march, de la Torre spoke about the violence that resulted in the launching of the PYFC after the string of shootings in 1998 claimed five lives in two weeks, including the Juarez brothers.

Bill Juarez left and Osca de la Torre right.

“It’s a tale of two cities,” de la Torre said. “The Pico Neighborhood has been segregated. There is poverty and persistent gang violence.”

The violence has claimed more than the lives of those who have been shot, Bill Juarez told the crowd.

His father died a year after his grandsons were killed, Juarez said, “then my mother from a broken heart. She would call out their names at night.”

Along with the pictures of his two sons and his nephew, on the board Juarez held there was a picture of his daughter.

“She couldn’t handle the depression,” he said. “She died March 25. She took her life.”

INSIDE THE PICO NEIGHBORHOOD
PART I: A World Apart, December 1, 2004
PART II: On the On The Front Lines, December 2, 2004
PART III: Youth and Street Violence, December 7, 2004