EVERETT – Stella Miranda lives in fear.
She worries that she will have to live with more loss. She is afraid that the person who killed her 19-year-old son will find her family.
She is so scared for her two other sons that she moved them far away from their south Everett home.
She won’t let them tell their friends where they live or allow her youngest son to ride his bicycle outside.
It scares her to return to the neighborhood where her firstborn, Dennis Riojas, was shot. She sees only the dangers there.
“We were afraid to live there anymore. We used to push a chair up against the door. My son slept with a crowbar,” Miranda said. “I don’t know who did this to Dennis. I don’t know who they are.”
Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives continue to investigate the Aug. 5 shooting in the 700 block of 124th Street SW, just across the street from where Riojas lived with his family.
It is in the same neighborhood that generates more crime than some small Snohomish County cities. It also is home to members of the county’s most active gang, according to the sheriff’s office.
Investigators believe the shooting is gang-related.
“There are definitely gang overtones,” sheriff’s spokesman Rich Niebusch said.
Something needs to be done in the neighborhood to clean out the gangs, graffiti and crime, Miranda said. She doesn’t want any other mothers to lose their sons.
No one has been arrested in connection with the death.
Detectives believe they have identified all of those involved, but there are varying degrees of cooperation among those being questioned, Niebusch said.
People shot at Riojas on at least two separate occasions the day he died.
One man, 18, has been jailed for drive-by shooting for allegedly firing a handgun at Riojas from a car. About 21/2 hours later, Riojas was shot and killed, Niebusch said.
Miranda said her son was not in a gang.
“He was with some bad friends. He may have been around some people in a gang, but my son wasn’t in a gang,” she said.
Miranda doesn’t know all the details about the day her son was killed. She and her husband had left their apartment to go visit her brother in-law. Riojas and his 18-year-old brother stayed behind.
She knows there was some sort of confrontation. She’s been told that her son was shot just across the street from their apartment.
She weeps knowing he wasn’t found until two hours later.
“I need people to know that he had his whole life ahead of him and he didn’t deserve to die,” Miranda said. “He was a good boy.”
Riojas dreamed of being a pro skateboarder. He practically lived at the local skate parks, zooming down the jumps and showing off his latest tricks.
He seemed to know the lyrics to every rap song. At age 2, he danced around to his favorite: “Ice, Ice Baby.” His dad even shaved the young boy’s eyebrow to look like the rap artist Vanilla Ice, Miranda said.
Riojas spent lots of time on his cell phone. He loved to shop and had tennis shoes in many colors. He baked cakes for his mom when she wanted something sweet and never forgot to tell her he loved her.
“Now, I don’t get to hear that,” Miranda said.
Instead, she and her family wear metal necklaces engraved with a picture of her son and something they discovered he had written on the first page of his Bible:
“I leave every thing up to the Lord. No matter what happens my faith will stay strong.”
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@ heraldnet.com.
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