The OTHER Shooting in the Rampart District: The Story of Irvin Panameno

Thursday night, it was quieter around the Rampart police station than it has been the rest of this week. Although plenty of officers were again brought in from elsewhere in the city just in case the sometimes violent demonstrations of the past three nights reignited, on night four, those on the street protesting Sunday’s shooting death of Manuel Jamines by an LAPD officer were a comparatively tame group.

Yet much earlier on Thursday, another tragic drama around another local shooting began to unfolding in that same Rampart area. This new and tragic incident involved a 19-year-old, El Salvadoran-born man named Irvin Panameno.

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Irvin Panameno, whose nickname was Smiley, joined a gang when he was 13-years-old. For the next three years, by his own admission, he was decidedly up to no good. Then for the last two years, he had been gradually trying to set his life right.

The turning point, he told those who inquired, occurred during the 18 months he spent at one of LA County’s probation camps, Camp David Gonzales, the place considered by many to be the jewel in the county’s deeply troubled probation system.

Irvin worked as a cook at Gonzales, where he was mentored by the camp’s head cook, a large, kind man named Dennis. Learning a skill made Irvin feel better about himself, he said, made him feel he was worth something. Camp also made him feel secure and, when his time at Gonzales was nearly up, he confided in some of the women counselors that he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go back to the old life, he said.

It was at Gonzales that he heard about Homeboy Industries, that it was a place that would provide help for somebody like him who was ready to make a change. As his release day approached, he held on to that thought like a beacon.

After leaving camp, Irvin showed up at the Homeboy offices at Alameda and Bruno, and waited for as long as it took until he could see Father Greg Boyle personally in order to ask him for a job. The priest agreed to put him on the building’s maintenance crew.

Right from the beginning, Irvin became known as the guy who showed up at the offices earlier than was required, and was nearly the last person out of the building. “He was around all the time. I mean ALL the time,” said one of the staff members.

But that wasn’t a criticism. People appreciated his enthusiasm and, within a short time, Irvin was a favorite at Homeboy. For one thing, he had smile that unfolded frequently and seemed devoid of pretense. He also had habit of reaching beyond his prescribed duties to help others–like the time after one senior staff member returned to work following major surgery. Irvin made a point of watching for her to arrive in every morning, so he could help her out of her car and into the office.

And he seemed to be trying to better himself. He enrolled in the continuation school that operated on the premises and happily wrote in his Facebook page that he was part of the class of 2011.

UCLA researcher Jorja Leap got to know Irvin when she added him to the list of newly hired former gang members she was tracking as part of her 5-year long evaluation of the Homeboy program. After nearly a year of following Irvin’s progress, she became cautiously convinced that he was one of those she would be able to count as a success story. “He was this sweet, joyful soul,” she said. “People called him Smiley around the office. And he lived up to his nickname.”

Novelist Leslie Schwartz, who runs the Homeboy writing program, was also taken with the kid. She talked with him at length this past Wednesday, after he had asked to join her class, telling her that, when he was locked up, he’d discovered that he loved to write poetry and he wanted to get better so he could one day publish his stuff “in a real magazine.”

“He was a real sweetheart,” Leslie said. But he said that it has been a hard year because his cousin got killed, then his brother—i think it was— was badly beaten.” In spite of it all, Leslie found him upbeat about the future. “He was excited about life.”

She told Irvin he could join her class the following Wednesday.

But it was not to be.

At 7:30 Thursday morning, Irvin had left his house to catch the bus that took him to work every weekday, and was walking along Rampart Blvd. between 3rd and 4th streets, when he was approached by someone. Perhaps it was several someones. In any case, somebody came up on him, then pulled out a gun and shot Irvin three times rapidly—BAM, BAM, BAM—once in the cheek, once in the back, once in the neck. Then the shooter vanished.

The cheek bullet did not enter Irvin’s brain tissue, as it might have, but his injuries were such that, in the intervening minutes between the shooting and the arrival of the paramedics, his brain was deprived of oxygen. It was unclear for how long, and whether the interval was lengthy enough to cause irreparable damage.

At Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center—more commonly known as County General— Irvin was rushed to surgery where the doctors were able to repair the damage that was causing him to bleed internally. Then the worst was confirmed. It was now nearly certain that his brain function was too minimal to sustain life and thought.

Staff from both Homeboy and Camp Gonzales streamed to the hospital when they got word of the shooting. Dennis the camp cook arrived, as did Father Greg, of course. Everyone did their best to comfort Irvin’s shell-shocked family.

By late Thursday afternoon, word came back to the Homeboy offices that it was just a matter of time before Irvin would be removed from life support. The fact that many on staff had been through this kind of sudden loss and grief on multiple terrible occasions did nothing to ease the loss now.

Also during the afternoon, Homeboy’s in-house attorney, Elie Miller, contacted the Rampart police station to find out if Irvin’s mother could pick up her son’s possessions–his wallet and his cell phone—that cops had taken from the scene in order to examine them. Yes, that would be fine, the officer she reached informed her. But the mother should not come at night because she might not be able to get in, “because of the protests,” he said.

Also, although the detectives at the Rampart Division had eliminated robbery as a motive, they were not yet saying whether the shooting was gang related.

The Homeboy staffers did not need to ask the question. They had no doubt that the shooting was gang related. They just didn’t know the why of it. Had Irvin backslid in some unknown way? Or did something in his past catch up with him? Or did someone simply go looking for a member of his old gang then, locating him, decide that he would do.

One thing, however, that everyone said they knew for sure was the fact that Irvin Panameno had changed his life —and that at Homeboy he was loved. (People kept using those words, “He was loved.”)

What no one said—what they didn’t have to say— is that sometimes, no matter how fast change has occurred, it isn’t fast enough to keep one safe.

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CODA: Just before I finished writing this post, I glanced again at Irvin’s Facebook page and noted that his last few status updates were filled with a determined sort of optimism:

For example, on Saturday, September 4, he wrote: Living LIFE ALL DAY…

Then on Monday, September 6, he wrote: Livin life to da fullest never look back at da mistakes gettin my shyt together….

After that, all the messages were only from others—full of love and prayers and sorrow.

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UPDATE: No one at Homeboy wants to give up on Irvin, at least not while one shred of possibility for a good outcome remains. At this morning’s meeting, which all of the staff generally attends every day before the office opens, Father Greg announced that Irvin had made it through the night, thus had lived 24 hours, and that this was a good sign—such as it was. With his words, Greg was careful not to raise unrealistic expectations, but nor did he want to squash hope.

After the medical update, Greg shifted the focus of his message. Those who had gathered listened intently, their expressions both controlled and stricken.

“One of homies said to me [yesterday], ‘No bullet can erase who he was for us.'” said Greg. “And it certainly can’t erase who he discovered himself to be in this place. ….

“That’s the thing that was mostly communicated to me yesterday.” he said, then fiddled with his iPhone for a moment to find something, and then read from the screen.

“Another homeboy texted me and said, ‘It hurts, pops. We were rivals on the streets. But Homeboy Industries made us brothers at the end. I got to know him real good. And I hate this bullshit.'”

Greg looked up from the phone, gazed around the room, and turned the angle of the message he was delivering yet again.

“Exactly right. No bullet can take from him who he was for for us.…and who he will continue to be for us, no matter what happens….”

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If you want to listen to the rest of the section of the meeting about Irvin, it begins at the 3:50 minute mark on the video below. (I particularly recommend from 6:20 to 7:45.)