Hard time for victim's mother

The mother of Porterville's most recent homicide victim still awaits his safe return home.

"Even though it's been two weeks I still wait for him to come around the corner," said Irma Vasquez. Vasquez' son, Vincent Ramirez, 19, died after being hit once in the torso during a drive-by shooting on Dec. 8. He was shot near the front of the Sunnyside Handy Market, in the 800 block of East Putnam Avenue, shortly before 3:30 p.m. At about 4:30 p.m., Vasquez said she was told by a doctor everything he had done for her son before Ramirez died at Sierra View District Hospital. "I was devastated," Vasquez said Tuesday from her East Porterville home. "I kind of got upset with the doctor and looked at him and grabbed him by the shirt and asked, 'Did my son make it?' He said he didn't make it and he had seen I got hysterical and got up and left the room."

Vasquez remembers talking with her son just a few hours before he was killed, so she said it's hard for her to accept that he's gone. A shrine still lies on the sidewalk near the spot where firefighters from the Porterville Fire Department gave Ramirez cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Candles lay on the grass and a sign is attached to a nearby palm tree.

Vasquez doesn't plan on taking the shrine down anytime soon.

"It's not for the bloodshed to continue," she said. "It's just there (to represent) where the accident happened."

A second shrine sits on a table in front of Vasquez' home. It's full of pictures of Ramirez, a Rosary, plants, flowers and Ramirez' name tag and hat from McDonald's where he worked.

On Tuesday, Vasquez' children were helping her pack so she could move from her home.

"It's really hard to be here," Vasquez said. "Just here, where he spent the last two years of his life since he moved out with his dad. He slept on the couch and at two or three in the morning he would knock on my door and tell me he's home. Nothing ever happened to him at two or three in the morning, nothing ever happened to him. On (Dec. 8) in broad daylight that's when they gunned him down and that's really hard to understand."

According to Vasquez, her son was very private. He had attended Porterville Adult School to earn a GED, but had dropped out because it was too hard for him to continue attending school and work.

"He was a simple person," Vasquez said. "Quiet. Never got into anybody's business. A very respectful person."

Ramirez was interested in Lowrider magazine and liked lowrider bikes, Vasquez said. He especially liked the rims of the bikes and planned on fixing one up as a lowrider.

Vasquez said that Ramirez was not active in a gang, but that he did affiliate with members of the Nortenos gang.

"I don't condone it," Vasquez said of gang activity. "I would just tell him the consequences to be in that. I would not be the kind of mother to put him down. He did not bring his trouble here. He knew not to bring it to the house because he knew he had his niece here."

Ramirez was the youngest of five children.

Vincent's sister, Rita Ramirez, 25, said his shooting has been hard on the family.

"It's a bad tragedy, but it brought our family closer," she said.

Vasquez said Ramirez was the one who took care of her and gave her someone to depend on.

"They took Vincent away from me," Vasquez said as her eyes filled with tears. "I need to move from here. My path is all crooked right now and I don't know how to make it straight ... It's like an emptiness I have inside of me and not one can fill that emptiness. These past (two) weeks, it's just like my whole life has been destroyed."

Contact Janet Enquist at 784-5000, ext. 1050, or jenquist@portervillerecorder.com

This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on December 22, 2004