An Out of the Way Scene, but Not an Isolated Case of Violence

A small bouquet of flowers is tied to a pole in the carport. It seems an unlikely place for a reminder of yet another act of violence, but that’s the way it is. The terrible things people do to each other and themselves happen anywhere, anytime.

This time it was outside an apartment complex in San Clemente, way down on the southern tip of Orange County and, despite being hard by the rumble of the San Diego Freeway, somewhat off the beaten path.

That said, there’s no such thing as off the beaten path when it comes to violence. Near this killing scene is a state park. Right behind the apartment complex is a community baseball diamond. But these otherwise reassuring suggestions of the idyllic life guarantee nothing.

Like a lot of us, I’ve been absorbed recently by the violence in the Mideast. Neighbor can’t get along with neighbor. Disputes that should be resolved aren’t. And so we see an endless procession of death marches and funerals in Israel and the West Bank.

With that violence scrawled daily on a giant world canvas, I went down to San Clemente late in the afternoon two days after the shooting that involved two neighbors. What happened down there sounded like nothing less than a miniaturized, personalized version of what we see and read every day from the Mideast.

Marisa Hidalgo saw its aftermath, about 9 a.m. Monday. She lives in an apartment across a driveway that separates her building from the row of carports for the neighboring apartments. “It’s traumatic,” she says, talking from a second-floor balcony. “I could close my eyes later and still see it.”

What she and others saw were the bodies of two men, one who had lived directly upstairs from the other. It’s not clear what kind of relationship the neighbors had, except that the Sheriff’s Department says the man who was shot had gone upstairs a couple of weeks ago and asked the other man to keep the noise down.

The department says their meeting wasn’t an angry one. But in recent days, police say, the upstairs tenant had received an official notice from management about noise coming from his apartment. He had that note when he confronted his downstairs neighbor Monday morning in the carport.

Shot dead was Jaroslav Liska, 47. He was carrying groceries and was on the way to spend a day at Disneyland with his girlfriend.

After shooting Liska, police say, 25-year-old Peter Mehran shot himself. The two bodies were probably 15 feet apart when Hidalgo saw them.

“I don’t see people killed every day,” she said, still shaken two days afterward. “For me, this is burned into my memory.”

Hidalgo’s downstairs neighbor is Lisa Patterson. The two kidded that they’ve learned to accommodate each other. When you live in such close quarters, Patterson says, you’d better find ways to make peace because you can always find things to irritate you about how other people behave.

“It all comes down to how mature people can be,” Patterson says.

There’s no need to stretch the analogy of one man shooting another to that of Israelis fighting Palestinians. No need because we know all too well that disputes that should be resolved between neighbors, either international or local, too often serve up nothing more than funerals.

Authorities say that Mehran apparently had plans to kill his brother who lives in San Diego, and that confronting Liska may have been an irrational reaction to the notice from management about the noise complaint. However, neighbors reported some arguing in the carport, and authorities have concluded that Mehran’s shooting of Liska wasn’t random.

No, Mehran knew who he was killing before he took his own life.

The answer to why goes with him to that familiar place where most crazed gunmen end up--their graves.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].