A pregnant mother who was declared brain dead last week after she and her sister were shot while sitting in a car outside their Canoga Park apartment was taken off life support, according to her family.
Adriana Jimenez, 22, who is 16 weeks pregnant and is the mother of a 6-year-old girl, had been on life support since the Aug. 23 shooting.
In a phone interview, Leonardo Ayala, 37, said his niece was set to hold a gender reveal party as part of her 23rd birthday Sept 11. He said Adriana’s sister, Maria Fernanda, 24, was in stable condition and still recovering from her injuries at a hospital.
Ayala said one of the bullets struck Fernanda in the throat, missing her vocal cords and jugular vein.
“The doctor said had it been just a few centimeters back, the bullet would have taken her life,” Ayala said.
He said it has been an especially difficult time for Fernanda, as she and her sister lost their mother 13 years ago to breast cancer. And now, he said, she has lost her young sister.
“She’s heartbroken,” Ayala said.
He said the family feels the same and is having a difficult time accepting the loss.
“We feel devastated,” he said. “We still can’t believe that this happened. We don’t want to accept that [Adriana] is not going to be with us.”
The Los Angeles Police Department said the shooting occurred last week on the 8300 block of Northgate Avenue. Police said the sisters were sitting inside a black Toyota Camry, parked in an alley outside their apartment, when a gunman walked up and opened fire, striking both women.
Ayala said that day, Adriana and her older sister had finished working as cooks at a Thai restaurant around 2 a.m. and decided to go out with two cousins. Adriana’s boyfriend, who is the father of the unborn baby, was also with the group.
He said Adriana was driving and pulled into the alley that led to the parking lot of their apartment. He said Adriana and her sister were in the car waiting for one of their cousins to move their car out of a parking space when the shooting happened. Police said the shooting occurred shortly before 8 a.m.
Ayala and police said the suspect was the ex-boyfriend of one of the cousins. A motive for the shooting remains under investigation.
“I still want to know why he did what he did,” Ayala said.
Two days after the incident, police arrested 30-year-old Walter Francisco Rodriguez Garcia in connection with the shooting.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has charged Rodriguez Garcia with three counts of attempted murder, with special allegations that he personally and intentionally discharged a firearm, according to the criminal complaint. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, court records show.
Prosecutors said they anticipate upgrading the charges against Rodriguez Garcia amid news that the young pregnant mother would be taken off life support.
Ayala said the family is still trying to determine if they’ll fly his niece’s body back to El Salvador, where she is from.
He said Adriana had only been in the country for two years before last week’s shooting. He said Fernanda, who came to the U.S. more than a decade ago, brought her younger sister to America.
The family started a GoFundMe to raise $10,000 to pay for medical and funeral expenses.
“Our family never imagined we would find ourselves facing a tragedy of this magnitude,” Vilma Carrazas, the girls’ aunt, wrote on the fundraiser. “Along with the overwhelming grief, we are now faced with unexpected medical and funeral expenses, the possible repatriation of Adriana’s remains, and the responsibility of making sure her young daughter is supported and cared for during this incredibly difficult time.”
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