Gunman Kills Girl, 15, and Her Fetus

A gunman strode up a driveway and fired blindly through the door of a garage-turned-apartment in Costa Mesa, killing a 15-year-old girl and the fetus she had carried for seven months, police said Sunday.

Yuridia “Judy” Balbuena, was hit once in the upper left chest at about 9 p.m. Saturday, said Lt. Ron Smith of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

Her parents, boyfriend and three siblings, who were gathered for dinner, watched as blood soaked her white T-shirt and black shorts.

Neighbors in the 2000 block of Wallace Avenue saw a man of medium build in his teens or early 20s run from the driveway through a field before scrambling over a chain-link fence to a nearby school.

Police did not have a suspect or a motive in the shooting, Smith said. Police said the crime--which they are calling a double homicide--may be gang-related.

A slender girl with long, dark hair, Balbuena died Saturday night at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, police said. Doctors performed an emergency caesarean section, hoping to save her female fetus. Although the premature baby was spared by the small-caliber bullet that felled her mother, the infant survived only about nine hours and died around 6:45 a.m. Sunday.

“It’s a tragedy,” Smith said. ‘The young girl was pregnant and she was shot down in front of her parents. It’s heart-wrenching.”

The Balbuenas had been living for several months with two extended families in a two-bedroom apartment with an attached garage that had been converted into a third bedroom.

Three shots pierced the closed, windowless garage door; only one hit Balbuena, Smith said. The bullets somehow missed her 19-year-old boyfriend, 19-year-old Omar Garcia; her parents, Micalea and Modesto; and three siblings, 18-year-old Armando, 13-year-old Sandra, and 2-year-old Jennifer.