Garden Grove Ca

A group of Orange County gang members in a pickup truck opened fire with a fully automatic assault rifle and another weapon on a Garden Grove family leaving for the movies, killing a teen-age rival and a 4-year-old boy and wounding six others, police said Sunday. The attackers systematically shot at a dozen people at dusk Saturday outside a home in one of the bloodiest gang attacks in the county's history. Killed were Miguel Navarro, 17, a warehouse clerk, and Frank Fernandez Jr.

It's tough living in the shadow of one of the most recognized tourist attractions in the world. For decades, Garden Grove city leaders have tried to ride Disneyland's coattails by building their own tourist destination. There's been talk of a Las Vegas-like casino, a theme park on Latino history, a music-filled river walk; all died in the early planning stages. But that hasn't stopped city officials from putting tourism at the heart of Garden Grove's plans for the future.

When South Korea played Togo in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, thousands of Korean Americans flooded the streets of Garden Grove to watch the soccer match on a giant TV screen. But even before the World Cup, Little Seoul, as the area is known, has long served as a center of Southern California's Korean diaspora. Beginnings Garden Grove was just a rural village when the railroad came through in 1905, enabling the area to flourish by exporting its orange, walnut, chile pepper and strawberry crops.

A man was arrested on suspicion of murder Sunday after he told police that he had strangled his 71-year-old mother during an argument. Richard Lam Nguyen, 30, told police he killed his mother, Nuong Thu Nguyen, on Saturday and spent the night wandering his neighborhood, according to Garden Grove police spokesman Lt. Dave Kivler. On Sunday, Nguyen called police and confessed to the crime, Kivler said. He was being held Monday in lieu of $1 million bail and was scheduled to be arraigned today in Santa Ana. Kivler said he believed the suspect was a medical student at a school in the Caribbean.

Thirteen years ago, Robert Rendon's brother was murdered in a gang shooting on Rosita Place in Garden Grove. Last week, around the corner on La Bonita Street, Rendon's 26-year-old son lost a leg in another drive-by shooting. "We're strong people, but this takes a lot out of you," said Rendon, 54, a carpenter who grew up and raised eight sons in the neighborhood, which straddles Westminster Avenue--also called 17th Street--and includes a few blocks of both Santa Ana and Garden Grove.

With hip-hop music providing the soundtrack, customers at the Laziz Cafe in Garden Grove pull 3-foot hoses to their lips, inhale the sweet-flavored tobacco smoke from hookah pipes and blow smoke rings into the air. "It's a chill place," said owner Sam Mirza. "People come here to relax from a day at work." Sometimes, though, Mirza said, he has to call police when he sees people drinking in the parking lot or when large crowds gather outside and won't leave.

Nearly 30 years ago, a mother of three was bludgeoned to death with a bowling pin in her west Garden Grove home. Police scoured the house and yard for clues and interviewed relatives, friends, associates and neighbors. But they never found the killer. And for decades, the case stayed cold. This month, Garden Grove police teamed up with a new reality television show that uses psychics to help solve crimes.

A Garden Grove woman was killed Thursday when her car collided with a pickup after one of the motorists ran a red light, police said. Susan Soon Song, 59, died at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana from head and chest injuries, Irvine Police Sgt. Denny Jenner said. Song was traveling west on Alton Parkway in Irvine about 4:30 a.m. in a sedan that crashed into a pickup driven by Todd Ballard Nelson, 34, of Irvine, Jenner said.

Even in a city that has entertained the most improbable of dreams, the latest plan to woo tourists and big bucks to Garden Grove is off the charts. An Indian tribe has formally proposed building a Las Vegas-style casino complex just up the road from Disneyland in the latest and far and away most lavish plan for making Garden Grove a tourist destination.

Eight-month-old Jasmine Terrazas has been sickly since the day she was born. Her mother worries constantly because the infant, so small and weak, has been afflicted by a string of illnesses, from fevers and painful ear infections to lung infections that leave her gasping for air. Vanessa Terrazas can't prove it, but the young mother suspects that the squalor she lived in during her pregnancy is to blame for her daughter's ailments.

More than three years after Garden Grove police seized a small amount of marijuana from a chronic pain patient, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider the city's argument -- which divided California's major law enforcement organizations -- that it should not have to give the drugs back. Advocates cheered the development as a step forward for medical marijuana users to get their "medicine" back from police.

A man charged with trying to kill his family by trapping them inside their bedrooms and dousing the house with gasoline is scheduled to be arraigned today, prosecutors said Thursday. Don Nguyen, 69, of Garden Grove is accused of preparing to set fire to his house just after midnight Nov. 2 while his family slept inside. According to the Orange County district attorney's office, Nguyen barricaded his wife, son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter and a 50-year-old male tenant inside their bedrooms and then doused the inside of the house with gasoline.

After a two-year legal battle with the city of Garden Grove, a Vietnamese Buddhist congregation has won a settlement paving the way for a 10,000-square-foot temple to be built on the site of a former medical building -- a spot the city had claimed was inappropriate for a church.

A man suspected of killing his parents in a Y2K plot to steal their money was arrested Wednesday, authorities said. If convicted, they say, Jose Alonso Najera Jr., 27, could face life in prison without the possibility of parole. Najera, of Anaheim, allegedly persuaded his parents to take their money out of banks in 1999 and put it in a safe-deposit box in anticipation of the Y2K bug. Then, on Dec. 28 of that year, Najera and an accomplice killed the parents, prosecutors said. Gerard Johnson was convicted in 2000 in the stabbing deaths of Jose Najera Sr., 42, and Elena Najera, 46, who owned a home in Garden Grove.

First things first: during our phone conversation Wednesday afternoon, Ron Granados got another call telling him his wife had just given birth to quadruplets. I couldn't see his face, but he sounded, uh, like a guy about to embark on a giant adventure. And now, on to other news: Granados also is about to embark on an adventure with the Garden Grove City Council. Like raising quads, it could get dicey.

For years John Dow stashed hundreds of photos he had snapped as an American serviceman during the Vietnam War in cardboard boxes stowed in his basement. The transparencies and negatives that captured his 1970 memories of Da Nang and Phu Bai gathered dust over decades. Dow, a former Army radio officer now living in Grain Valley, Mo., didn't show the photos to many people. He rarely looked at them himself. But his mind often flickered back to the rural villages of Vietnam.

Many cities would be cheering the news that Wal-Mart and one of its mega-controversial superstores had moved out of town before even unpacking its bags. But in Garden Grove, a town always pressed for cash and respect, city officials and neighborhood business owners are mourning the big-box retailer's abrupt departure -- which occurred just days before city planners were to vote on the project. "It was cruel the way they did it," said Garden Grove Councilman Bruce Broadwater.

An elderly man in a dark suit walks into a City Council meeting promising to spread $8-billion all over town, building a theme park on a golf course and a boutique hotel and upscale outdoor mall on a long-neglected patch of land. In any other town, the news might be greeted with cheers. In Garden Grove, skeptical residents roll their eyes. "Yeah, and I wish I was taller and rainwater was root beer," said Jim Tortolano, longtime editor of the town's weekly newspaper, the Garden Grove Journal.

The manager of an auto repair shop in Garden Grove was arrested Thursday on suspicion of sexually attacking women on two occasions after luring them into the station's service bay. Police said Adrian Fuente, 39, assaulted the first woman during business hours Oct. 30 at the Econo Lube and Tune, in the 6900 block of Chapman Avenue.

Authorities on Wednesday were looking into the death of an allegedly unarmed schizophrenic man shot by Garden Grove police over the weekend. Trinidad Ornelas, 46, was shot by officers who had responded to a domestic violence call about 4:30 p.m. Sunday at his residence in the 12000 block of Barbara Avenue, police said. Arriving at the scene, police said, the officers found Ornelas -- who allegedly had been choking his mother -- in the frontyard.