Woman shot at restaurant buried today

Karen Zekan

Tuesday, March 23, 1999 | 11:22 a.m.

They buried Crystal Ledesma today -- the many friends who knew her radiant smile and caring ways, the family members now watching over her 5-year-old boy who was the center of the young woman's world.

And on sheets of paper in a detective's folder are notes revealing the horrific reality that the 24-year-old Las Vegas woman was killed by a bullet meant for someone else. She never knew her killer; she died within seconds Thursday night while waiting for food at a McDonald's restaurant drive-through window.

"She was an all-around good person. She was always happy and smiling," said a young man identifying himself as Thow M., an uncle to Ledesma's little boy. "I miss her so much."

The funeral was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. in the chapel at Desert Memorial Cremation and Burial Society followed by a 12:30 p.m. burial at Paradise Memorial Gardens.

Many of Ledesma's former Rancho High School classmates filtered into the Desert Memorial chapel Monday afternoon, among the hundreds who sat in the pews for hours talking quietly and glimpsing ahead to the open white casket cradling the once vivacious brunette with full lips and soft brown eyes.

Still more, however, couldn't find the emotional strength to walk inside and instead sat on the brick planters outside and stood on the steps. As one young man said, "I don't want to remember her that way."

"She never knew how to get mad," Ledesma's mother, Maria Cogburn, said, pausing to accept flowers from a friend and to hug others as they left the chapel. "She was a beautiful girl."

The early news accounts of the fatal shooting angered Cogburn because at least one television station initially implied her daughter could have been a gang member or somehow tied to the people responsible for her death. Cogburn said the news station corrected the story by Saturday morning.

"She wasn't a gang member," Cogburn said of her daughter who was born in the Philippines -- a country Ledesma longed to see again. "My daughter was an innocent bystander."

Ledesma and a friend were after Chicken McNuggets for Ledesma's son, Keoni Lee Ledesma-Benito, who was sitting between them in the friend's truck when they pulled up to the fast-food restaurant's drive-through window at 9:35 p.m. Thursday.

They were unaware that a fight had started among four Hispanic teens in the parking lot moments earlier and then moved inside.

The drive-through window was open, as was the driver's side window of the truck. Ledesma's friend, who asked not to be identified, said she could hear people yelling inside the restaurant. Seconds later, she heard a gunshot and sped out of the drive through.

"Crystal looked at me like she didn't know what had happened," her friend said, remembering the horrible moment and seeing little Keoni covered in his mother's blood. "It was her last look at life as blood poured out of her mouth."

The two young women had been friends since biology class in the ninth grade where Ledesma, she said with a smile of fondness, let her cheat off her tests. They were planning to take Keoni with them on a Cancun vacation in May.

"I pulled into Flying J's (a truck stop nearby)," the friend said. "I pulled her out of the truck and put her on her side. I cleared the blood from her mouth. I tried to get a passageway so she could breathe, but she was already gone."

The image, she says, plays out over and over in her mind every time she closes her eyes. She hasn't eaten since 3 p.m. Thursday, when she and Ledesma ate at Macayo's, a Mexican restaurant on Tropicana Avenue. The worst moment, however, was reclaiming her truck from police custody and seeing the blood stains and bullet hole.

"Gang violence is stupid," the friend said. "We all are trying to live here. Everyone has to try to get along."

Cogburn said her grandson remembers watching his mother die, but can't understand why his mother will forever remain "sleeping," the most gentle way the family could explain death to a 5-year-old.

North Las Vegas Police maintain that the incident was not gang related because the suspects involved do not claim gang ties.

Police arrested Miguel Cano, 17, at 6 a.m. Friday in connection with Ledesma's slaying, although Lt. Joe Forti said he likely will be charged as an adult with murder with a deadly weapon.

Forti said the boy provided police with a statement devoid of emotion.

At the time of her death, Ledesma was employed by a local Footlocker shoe store. She also held jobs after graduating from high school as a runner for the MGM hotel-casino, in housekeeping for the Jockry Club and as a sales associated at Just for Feet.