New Life Torn Asunder by Drugs, AIDS, Murder : Connecticut: Edna Diaz arrived in the United States in 1976 with a new baby on her hip and her man by her side. But nothing turned out the way she’d hoped.

HARTFORD, Conn. —  Edna Diaz is a small, tired-looking woman whose living room is filled with fake ferns and brightly painted plaster parrots. It is her Caribbean haven.

Diaz spends a lot of time thinking about the sunny days of her childhood in Puerto Rico, daydreams that help her forget the heartache of the past 10 months.

She buried one of her six sons, a wild, restless 15-year-old who was found with his hands bound and a plastic bag over his head. She watched another one jailed on murder charges in the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl.

The son charged with murder was later released for lack of evidence, but his tangle with the law has left the family with more than $6,000 in legal bills.

“It’s been unbelievable,” Diaz said, running a hand through her short, dark hair. “It’s been just one terrible thing after another.”

Edna Milagros Diaz has lived in Connecticut for 19 of her 35 years, but says it seems more like forever. The family has been on welfare for years.

She says she can hardly remember herself as the starry-eyed teen-ager who arrived on a flight from San Juan in 1976, with a new baby on her hip and her man, Angel Santos Sr., by her side.

She remembers thinking she was finally in the States and anything was now possible.

But Diaz says she never, ever, could have dreamed how awful things would turn out: that the strong, vital man by her side would get AIDS from shooting up drugs, and the tiny, innocent baby in her arms would be named as the perpetrator of a horrible crime that would outrage the community.

Diaz says she also couldn’t have imagined what her life would be like in Hartford, especially the six years she and her family have lived in Charter Oak Terrace, a squalid, gang-infested housing project.

Hartford had a record 58 homicides in 1994. Seven occurred at city housing projects during the final two weeks of the year.

“We don’t want to be here, but the rent is only $205 a month and they pay all of the utilities,” Diaz said. “My husband doesn’t speak English and can’t find a job. We can’t afford to move.”

Edna and Ismael Diaz and her five surviving sons share a two-bedroom apartment on a street lined with graffiti-smeared, boarded-up buildings.

In late January, the bodies of her son, Luis Santos, and another 15-year-old were found in one of these buildings, less than 200 feet from the Diaz residence.

And, back on March 26 last year, 7-year-old Marcellina Delgado was shot and killed just down the street. Police say the child, who was visiting her aunt, was the innocent victim of a botched assassination attempt by two Los Solidos gang members who were after a rival gang leader and killed the girl by mistake.

The police, acting on an informant’s tip, accused Edna Diaz’s oldest son, Angel Santos Jr., of being the shooter.

He was arrested, even though tests showed he had not recently fired a weapon, and was held in solitary confinement for seven months before being released in October.

The charges eventually were dropped. Now Santos spends his days sulking amid the parrots and ferns, watching TV. He says he wants to get a job and take care of his girlfriend and their new baby.

Diaz all along said her son is innocent. “He was at home at the time the shooting happened,” she said. “I told the police that, but they didn’t believe me.”

Meanwhile, nobody has been charged with the deaths of Luis Santos and his friend, Marvin Feliciano. Edna Diaz says police tell her they think Luis and Marvin were killed in a drug dispute with a father and son whose bodies were found in an apartment on the far side of the project the same day. The father and son lived in the apartment where the boys’ bodies were discovered.

“The police say there’s nobody to charge because the killers are dead, but I don’t believe that,” Diaz said. “I think others were involved.”

Diaz says she is worried about the safety of her other sons: Ismael, 12; Ariel 13; Jorge, 14, and Jose, 18.

“So far, none of them are in gangs,” she said. “Jose has a job at Boston Chicken, and I try to keep the younger ones busy with the Boy Scouts and after-school programs.

“Whenever they don’t mind me, I tell them to remember what happened to their brother.”

She is haunted by the fear that she’ll lose control of the younger boys as she did with Luis.

“Luis went wild after his brother was arrested and accused of shooting that little girl,” she said. “He started hanging with a gang and staying away from home for two and three nights at a time. I tried to show him he was headed for trouble, but he’d just laugh and say, ‘OK, Mom.’ ”

She says the gangs and the drugs in Hartford create a terrible temptation for the youngsters and a constant heartache for their parents.

“When your boys go out the door,” she said, “you never know if you’re seeing them for the last time. I want to leave Hartford, but we’re trapped here.”