It was a typical Sunday in El Sarape.
While CicLAvia closed the road to site visitors, households have been having fun with Mexican meals and a enjoyable environment at East Hollywood Restaurant in a strip mall on Melrose Avenue.
But the following morning, when the primary prepare dinner of the day confirmed up on the restaurant on Monday, a very totally different scene awaited. She instantly referred to as proprietor Beto Mendez.
At first, Mendez thought there may need been graffiti outdoors the restaurant. he was fallacious.
El Zarape on Melrose Avenue stays closed after the Mexican restaurant was destroyed by robbers.
(Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times)
“The second I obtained there, I used to be shocked,” Mendez stated in an interview with The Times. “I noticed the place fully destroyed.”
There was $80,000 value of harm inside, Mendez stated.
Chairs have been overturned and tables have been tilted. One of the bars had been hit with a hammer and all of the TVs had been spray painted with graffiti. Spray paint coated one in every of his surveillance cameras within the bar and appeared to cowl your entire wall of the restaurant. A protected containing $20,000 was stolen.
The incident was first reported by LA Taco.
Surveillance video exhibits a person carrying a light-colored hoodie and darkish pants and Nike waving cans of spray paint contained in the bar earlier than inflicting any injury. According to the video, the person sprayed paint on one of many surveillance cameras. Mendez did not see anybody else within the video, however the quantity of harm, together with the “C14” tag on the wall, prompt there was a couple of vandal.
“I noticed the place fully destroyed,” says Beto Mendez, proprietor of El Sarape.
(Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times)
Police stated Mendez advised them the vandalism was linked to the C-14 gang, also called the Clantons. Los Angeles Police Department had no fast touch upon the state of affairs.
C-14 is a gang that has existed in Los Angeles for practically a century and originated on Clanton Street, later renamed 14th Street, in response to an internet site that chronicles the road gang.
This gang is lively within the neighborhood, tagging up and down Melrose.
The group additionally tagged the signal of an area home of worship, Trinity Episcopal Church, with “C14” scrawled in spray paint.
“This space is sort of a hub for gangs,” stated a person who works close to El Sarape, who requested anonymity attributable to security issues. “MS-13 and C-14 and different small native forces. There’s lots of tagging within the neighborhood.”
“If somebody tags the within of a restaurant, that is fairly critical,” he says.
For Mendez, the restaurant’s destruction could not have come at a greater time. Just two weeks in the past, his ex-wife handed away. Mendes shares custody of their two teenage daughters together with her and at present has full custody.
“They’re already below strain and stress from shedding their mom, however I have never stated something in regards to the restaurant proper now,” he stated. “I’d wish to maintain it to myself and take care of it.”
Mendez is attempting to boost cash via GoFundMe to reopen the restaurant and restore the injury.
Mendez and one other one who labored on the close by enterprise stated the restaurant had had comparatively few issues within the seven years it had been open, however the incident occurred after the Feb. 11 Super Bowl.
That day, after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas, a person fired a gun into the air close to El Sarape, barricaded himself inside, and a police SWAT crew arrested him. He stated he needed to reply so as to take action.