Dream denied: Hard-working immigrant’s plans end on streets at hands of teens

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, June 11, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

Donations

Donations to help the family of Benito Zambrano Lopez with funeral costs can be deposited in Bank of America account No. 004964647097, his relatives said.

Benito Zambrano Lopez liked to barbecue. Especially lamb, in a pit.

Every Sunday, the 48-year-old man bought meat, peppers, cilantro and other fixings at Supermercado del Pueblo on Rancho Drive and Washington Avenue, near where he was killed last weekend.

He would walk northwest the 12 blocks home to an apartment he shared with a friend, and, as of three months ago, his second-oldest son, Roberto.

The walk relaxed him, especially after a long week working in plumbing. He had been on one crew or another, building homes around the Las Vegas Valley, for the last eight years. He was hoping, in a year or so, to fulfill his dream of buying a pickup -- "A Ford, maybe," said Paulo Zambrano Lopez, a nephew, in Spanish.

Benito's 10 cousins and nephews in Las Vegas told him not to take Tumbleweed Avenue on his walks home, because it was dangerous.

"We told him those gang members had jumped and beat up women and even little girls on that street," Benjamin Zambrano Mendoza, also a nephew, said Tuesday afternoon.

But Benito -- described by family members as a simple, hardworking man who didn't drink or smoke, but liked a good joke and a meal with loved ones -- stuck to his ritual.

Until Sunday. At about 10:30 a.m., an hour most people in the valley were most likely just stirring, in the back yard or at church and starting to sweat, Benito was beat up, shot five times in the back, and left without his groceries, by four teenagers.

No more barbecue. No pickup.

A fatherless son, who was at a pool with a friend at the time. Six more fatherless children in San Salvador, a town of less than 500 in Hidalgo, Mexico. And 40 or so fellow natives of San Salvador scattered throughout the valley with one less friend.

"They all knew him," Zambrano Mendoza said.

"Everybody knows everybody in our hometown," Paulo added.

"And we have no assaults, no crime like this," he said.

But in central Las Vegas, where many Hispanics and blacks join gangs at a young age, residents live with assaults, and senseless crimes like Sunday's, too often.

Sgt. David Stansbury of Metro's gang unit said the motive for the crime remains a mystery. Benito was walking down the wrong street at the wrong time, he said.

"(Gang members) can be violent toward anyone at any time, just like a pack of wild dogs," Stansbury said.

Now cousins, nephews, nieces and friends, most of whom are roofers, cement layers, and construction workers, are remembering the man, his dreams and their own, which are the same as dreams of immigrants everywhere.

A better life for the children. A time when the hard work would end and families could be reunited, with grandmothers in Mexico meeting the little ones born in the United States. A pickup.

"What kept him going was more or less the same as all who come here from other countries," said Maria Lugo, a distant relative, who works as a cashier in the same supermarket where Benito shopped. She started her shift Sunday several hours after Benito was shot.

"You work with your sweat to get a better life, and feel the fatigue after work along with the loneliness of being separated from your family," Lugo said.

Benito had described that life to his son Roberto in recent weeks.

"My dad said life here was hard, but you could get ahead," Roberto said. The teenager also said he thought Las Vegas was great three months ago, when he first arrived. Now he's not so sure.

"My dad said he didn't want us to be lacking anything, ever," Roberto said.

So Benito would send $100 to $150 to his wife and children in San Salvador every week, earned at his $6-an-hour job.

"But now I'm lacking a father," Roberto said.

He plans to go into plumbing as well now, and get that pickup, and support his family.

The rest of the family and a group of friends are trying to raise the money to send Benito's body home.

The cost, about $7,000, is almost 10 times what Benito paid an immigrant-smuggler, to cross the border in 1995.

"It cost more to go back dead than it did for him to get here alive," said Paulo.