California Mom Accused In Gang Murder

Mothers have lied, spun elaborate alibis and hidden evidence for their gang-member sons. But investigators say Eva Daley went to murderous lengths.

Daley, 30, drove her 14-year-old son and six other members of the Latin Marijuana Smokers gang to a skate park to kill a 13-year-old boy they had a grudge against, police say. The boy, Jose “Bobby” Cano, was stabbed to death.

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Daley and the seven teenagers were charged with murder in the June 26 slaying near the squalid skate park in this port city of 462,000 about 25 miles south of Los Angeles.

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Police refused to say where the mother was during the attack itself or immediately afterward. And they would not say what led to the arrests, or what the killers had against Cano.

“There is a lot of father-son gang participation, even grandfather-father-son. But it’s unusual to see mothers cheering on their sons in a violent gang conflict,” said gang expert Alex Alonso, who runs the Web site streetgangs.com. “They usually are naive about their son’s activity, in denial. They always think other kids are involved in gangs but not theirs.”

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Prosecutors in Long Beach said Daley drove the teenagers to the scene “in furtherance of the gang”—an allegation that could add 10 years to her 25-years-to-life sentence if she is convicted.

Police said Daley knew her son and the others planned to kill Cano.

“She wasn’t taking them there to play in the park,” Officer Jackie Bezart said.

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After Daley’s arraignment Tuesday, a man supporting her screamed and lunged at Cano’s family in a courthouse hallway and attacked a cameraman.

Standing nearby, Cano’s bleary-eyed mother, who declined to give her name, said she was more angry at Daley than at those who stabbed her son.

“Taking children to do this?” she said in Spanish. “This I don’t understand.”