That made the incident more than just another murder. Detectives from LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division took over the case from local units. Police quickly concluded that Gonzalez’s killing was a mistake. The killer apparently intended to shoot the friend in the passenger seat, who was not identified. Gonzalez had reportedly known the man as a casual friend for years and was spending time with him while visiting her mother, Felicia Parks-Mena, one of the chief’s daughters. The man was also a gang member with a felony record, police said, and he had been wounded three weeks earlier in an ambush at another fast-food joint, Johnnie’s Pastrami.
His world seemed a long way from Gonzalez’s. Raised in Los Angeles by her mother, Gonzalez moved to live with her father and stepmother in Orange County two years ago to attend Saddleback College. She also held two jobs, as a drugstore clerk and telephone operator. At Coast Hills Community Church, she taught Sunday school to 15 second and third graders and took church trips to Mexico to build homes for poor families, according to pastor Eric Nachtrieb. “She’s the kind of gal who you’d see with three or four kids in her lap,” says Nachtrieb.
The family tragedy comes at a time when Parks is fighting to contain a spreading scandal touched off by a rogue cop who admitted stealing cocaine—and who accused two dozen fellow officers of perjury, shooting unarmed gang members and planting drugs and guns on suspects. The LAPD also faces the threat of a federal civil-rights suit alleging a “pattern and practice” of abuse and racial discrimination, raising the possibility of federal oversight for the department. Since last fall, judges have overturned 81 criminal cases brought by officers of the Rampart Division alone. Two sergeants and an officer have been charged with perjury and faking police reports, and more indictments are expected.
Chief Parks himself was in seclusion last week, but some of his best cops were canvassing the neighborhood around Popeyes. So far, police have complained they were getting little useful information from their chief witness—the friend who ducked.
