Tuesday's column

Terrorism claimed the life of a 12-year-old and his father visiting Montebello this past weekend.

Yes. I said it. Terrorism.
How else do you describe an attack on a party of 70 or so people gathered in a back yard to celebrate a graduation.

Killed were Albert Garcia, 12, of Hemet, and his father Juan "Jay" Garcia, 44, of Perris. Two others were wounded in the attack including a 23-year-old woman and an unidentified man.
The 9:50 p.m. ambush occurred Saturday while friends of Maria Soto gathered at her home in the 100 block of East Madison.

Partygoers feasted on chicken wings, barbecued ribs, pasta salad, meatballs and chips and salsa.

There was a D.J. There was dancing. There was Bud Light. There was a cake acknowledging the high school graduation of Soto's 20-year-old blind daughter, Rosemary.

It could have been any party anywhere in the San Gabriel Valley on a sweltering summer night.

"We were happy one minute and then it turned into a nightmare," Soto said. "It was horrible."

Soto pointed to a dark blood stain in the dirt next to a small rose bush in her back yard.

"You don't know when it's going to hit you," she continued. "Please. When are they going to stop devastating our families and our children?"

Every day we send young men and young women off to foreign countries because we're told they are keeping terrorism at bay.

Maybe we're keeping Islamic extremists out of the United States. But what is our government doing about terrorism in our own back yard?

There are no daily briefings, no green zones, no troop surges. I haven't heard presidential candidates Barack Obama or John McCain say a word about fighting local terrorist gangs.
Yet young men and women like Albert Garcia are being shot at -- sometimes wounded and sometimes killed -- by remorseless killers.

I strolled around the neighborhood where Garcia and his dad were gunned down. Graffiti marred the sidewalks.

"Free Clumsey," read one.

Graffiti also marred street signs, garden walls and even the whitewashed wooden siding of Soto's raised foundation house.

Just a few miles north, where San Gabriel Boulevard leads to the Montebello mall, taggers from Pico Viejo, White Fence and El Monte Flores have clearly marked their turf.

I asked Montebello police Chief Dan Weist if his community could stomach the slaying of an innocent 12-year-old. I asked if he thought there was a gang problem in his town.

"It's not as bad as you say it is," came the reply.

Mayor Bill Molinari said he was "sickened by an event that's never happened in our history."
As I watched heat waves rise from the asphalt on Madison Monday, I heard the chimes of an ice cream truck in the distance.

I listened as the driver turned onto Madison and passed me. A sign above the dash said "Caution. Children."

The song continued.

"It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all."