Girl gunned down at Outlook home

OUTLOOK, Wash. — Authorities are searching for four people wearing blue clothing and bandannas they say knocked on the front door of a low-slung trailer Thursday night and fatally shot the 16-year-old girl who answered.

Diane Lopez — popular student, aspiring veterinarian and her mother’s helpmate — died en route to a Seattle hospital.

The Yakima County coroner’s office will perform an autopsy this morning in what is the county’s seventh homicide this year.

Yakima County sheriff’s investigators said the shooting is gang-related.

Lopez was not involved with gangs, though one of her three brothers is and has served time in jail, her mother, Maria Guadalupe, said in a brief interview Friday morning as she left her home to talk to police.

A distraught Guadalupe said her daughter enjoyed school, playing a home dancing video game, cooking a variety of Mexican dishes and helping with housework. Lopez leaves behind a 2-year old daughter.

"She was a nice person," Guadalupe said. "She was respectful. She always respected people."

Sunnyside school officials agree with Guadalupe’s characterization of her daughter. Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin, too, said it’s believable. But while family members are cooperating with investigators, Irwin criticized them for enabling gangs and drugs at their home.

"If you allow gang activity, drug activity or people that are involved in that around your family and on your property, this kind of thing can happen and you are being absolutely irresponsible and naive if you think otherwise," he said. "It’s tragic that this girl was shot, but this family allowed the activity at their house. It’s to be expected."

The shooting occurred about 9:30 p.m. Thursday at 10 First Ave. in Outlook, a weedy and unincorporated neighborhood west of Sunnyside known for gang activity. Sheriff’s deputies and officers from the Sunnyside Police Department responded.

The sheriff’s office said the residents of the mobile home heard a car pull into their driveway. Guadalupe saw four people get out of a car and walk toward the residence, and she broke a bedroom window in an attempt to scare them off, according to deputies.

Instead, the suspects knocked on the front door, which Lopez opened. She was shot once in the side with a small-caliber firearm, authorities said.

She was taken first to Sunny-side Community Hospital and died early Friday on her way to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Irwin described the incident as more "purposeful" than a drive-by shooting.

"They didn’t mean to scare someone last night, they meant to shoot someone last night," he said.

Such brazenness is not unprecedented. In May of last year, 18-year-old Daniel Rivera was surrounded and gunned down by gang members in front of his family’s Yakima home. The coroner said he was shot at least 10 times. No arrests have been made in that case.

Residence well known

The white mobile home where Lopez lived, with one shade tree and a dusty lawn full of barking dogs, is adjacent to Yakima Valley Highway next to a home with manicured grass and a 6-foot chain-link fence.

Deputies are familiar with the address. Dispatchers have fielded 21 calls involving the residence since 1998, five of them weapons offenses. Irwin said deputies have visited the house investigating drive-by shootings, code enforcement violations and animal control complaints.

Two years ago along the highway outside the same residence, sheriff’s deputy Bobby Miranda was shot in the leg in 2009. Teenager Jacob Almaguer, who lives at another Outlook home, has been charged with that shooting. Irwin said investigators suspect Almaguer used the shadows around Lopez’s home for cover as he fired.

Members of Lopez’s family are named as witnesses in that case.

Neighbors said they tell their children to keep their distance from the house and see young men wearing all red come and go. At recent community meetings to address the town’s well-known gang problems, neighbors discussed the need to have the residence condemned and hauled away.

On Thursday night, members of a neighboring family said they heard gunshots about 9 p.m. and saw police search the neighborhood, including a weed-choked lot next door. Huddled low on the couch to avoid bullets, they said they didn’t seen any cars or suspects.

"I didn’t get to see anything, I was just freaked," said a 19-year-old mother of two boys, who has lived in the neighborhood about two months.

The house she shares with her parents is surrounded by a locked gate and barbed wire, put up by their landlord.

Another neighbor said their family had moved from Granger to Outlook about a month ago because their 14-year-old son had been associating with gang members there. The boy and his 16-year-old sister have strict rules to not talk to people at the trailer home.

"Don’t have a relationship with them, don’t talk with them," the mother said through a translator.

Despite the obvious gang problem, both families said they’ve made friends with non-gang families and that children ride bikes and shoot hoops in the streets.

Efforts to stop retaliation

Mark Baysinger, executive director of Sunnyside’s Promise, said case managers at the nonprofit are working to discourage retaliation for the homicide.

"There are efforts going on to keep that from happening," Baysinger said.

Late Friday morning, a group of well-dressed men with a couple of teenage boys in neckties visited the home and embraced a man with tears in his eyes. They declined to speak to reporters.

Ryan Maxwell, assistant principal at Sunnyside High School, described Diane Lopez as an outgoing and good student on pace to graduate in 2012.

He said he does not believe she was the target of Thursday’s shooting.

"I believe she was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Maxwell said.

Maxwell said counselors will be available to students at the high school and Outlook Elementary School, where a sibling of Lopez attends.

Lopez was the high school’s second shooting victim in two months. In March, a drive-by shooter struck a 16-year-old girl in the back while she lay in bed at her Sunnyside home.

Maxwell broke the news to Lopez’s teachers individually before a staff meeting at the high school Friday, which was a professional development day with no class.

"They took it very hard," he said.

• Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

• Herald-Republic reporter Mark Morey contributed to this report.