Crime & Safety

Gang Life Lives in Silver Lake's Hipster Hills

The so-called 'pizza delivery man killing" of this past summer has left many scared and confused about whether their neighborhood is, in fact, changing.

Echo Park Patch is among the many media outlets keeping an eye on the case of Jose Beltran.

The 18-year-old Silver Lake resident may have fatally shot 25-year-old Juan David Vasquez in the hills above Silver Lake Boulevard last summer.

Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Beltran attended John Marshall High School and lived just a few blocks away from where the shooting took place.

Beltran's been charged with the killing, although the case has become more complicated now that a witness has changed her story.

Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Diane Villeda said in court last month that it was Roger May, leader of the small Silver Lake tagging gang FLC, or "Familias Los Craziest, that actualy shot Vasquez Loma.

In a new piece, L.A. Weekly writer Matthew Heller takes an in-depth look at how the killing has rocked the increasingly-affluent neighborhood around Effie Street and Silverlake Boulevard.

Ironically, it's the same stretch of street that the recent "hipster high speed chase" chewed up during rush hour.

Says Matthew Heller in the L.A. Weekly article:

Whatever happens to Beltran, who faces 50 years to life in prison if convicted, Silver Lake residents must cope with the sober reality that gang violence of the most extreme kind has tainted their community. "I can't figure it out," says one.

Heller also notes that no one he contacted would speak on record: "All of them cited fear of gang retaliation in Silver Lake."

Read the full L.A. Weekly piece here.


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