Samaritan’s Elbow, Not His Helping Hand, Injured in Good Deed

“It’s a rough neighborhood, with lots of drug pushers, and there’ve been a lot of robberies and break-ins,” Antonio Sierra Avila said of his block in Pomona.

So when he saw two teen-age boys acting as though they were trying to break into a neighbor’s house, he went over with his German shepherd, Spooky, to investigate. What he found was his neighbor, Matilde Mendez, trying to stop two boys about 13 or 14 from taking her husband’s bike.

For his efforts, Avila, 38, and his dog both underwent surgery Friday for gunshot wounds sustained while stopping the boys from stealing the bicycle. Despite being shot in the elbow, Avila said, he would act again to stop crime.

“Somebody’s got to do it,” he said from his bed at County-USC Medical Center. “You can’t just let people rob and steal. It’s not right to let someone get away with that kind of thing. I might need somebody to help me someday.”

Mendez, who was at home alone, said in Spanish she gives “thanks to God” that Avila, whom she had not met before, came to her aid. “I’m very sorry about what happened to him,” she added.

Avila went to Mendez’s yard to discover “one of the kids holding a bike, a beach cruiser, and trying to ride away with it, but a woman was trying to stop him. When I talked to him, the boy said it was his bike and he had papers to prove it.

“So I told him to show me the papers and he said: ‘I don’t have to show you no papers.’ And I told him, “You do if you want to take that bike away.”

The other boy began backing away, Avila said. “But the kid with the bike was kinda crazy . . . acting real weird. So I told the woman to go into the house and phone the police.

Then, Avila said, the boy “pulled a gun out of his waistband and started shooting. I heard Spooky yelp and saw him trying to lick his face. I threw up my hands to try to protect myself and felt a bullet hit my elbow. When he’d fired all his bullets, the kid took off.”

Pomona detectives said they had detained two youths they found 45 minutes after the shooting in the basement of a house nearby but would not identify them because of their ages. Both youths were taken to Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center, police said.

Avila, who underwent surgery to remove the bullet from his elbow, said he and his 8-year-old dog are lucky.

“I think the kid unloaded the whole gun at us,” he said. “He fired at least four or five shots. But I guess he was just a lousy shot.”

Spooky had one operation to repair damage to his right eyelid and was expected to undergo more surgery around the eye. “He was extremely lucky it was not a bullet but only a bullet splinter that hit him,” said Tahir Khan, the veterinarian who operated on him at Pomona Valley Veterinary Hospital. “He’s still exhausted, but looking very much better.”

“I’m glad Spooky’s made it,” Avila said. “He’s a fine dog, very protective of me and my family. But he’s not aggressive. You should see him playing with my 1-year-old son.”

Avila said he had been laid off his job at a small garage last October because business had been slow and has not been able to get another job. He came to the United States from Mexico in 1969. He and his wife, Albertina, have two sons and a daughter.

As thankful as she is for Avila’s help, Mendez, who came to the United States from Mexico three years ago, said she is afraid “that friends of the arrested boys may come back to her home. I’m more afraid for my three children than I am for myself.”