The trial of Salvadoran Edwin Ramos for the mistaken-identity gang murder of Tony Bologna and his two sons in 2008 has been moving along since late January. The killings caused even liberal San Francisco to reconsider its crazy-permissive sanctuary policy for illegal aliens, which had protected Edwin Ramos, a previously arrested violent offender, from deportation and prison. However the loony-left city has recently been slipping back into its bad old ways to protect illegal alien “youth” (an estimated 30 percent of whom are older fellows with fake juvenile IDs).
Ramos (pictured) took the stand to testify on Monday, and his lawyer obviously pursued a psychology defense, that he had a rotten childhood in which his mother rejected him. However, in earlier testimony, former gang members characterized Ramos as a well-known MS-13 street soldier and active in the gang.
Along with the specifics of the charges, the trial has provided a fascinating window into the criminal alien world that now occupies San Francisco.
Ramos takes stand in his triple-murder trial, San Francisco Chronicle, April 9, 2012
The man accused of gunning down a father and two of his sons on a San Francisco street took the stand in his murder trial Monday to describe a troubled childhood that led him to join a gang.
Edwin Ramos, 25, spoke quickly and quietly in San Francisco Superior Court about the years leading up to the fatal shootings in June 2008. He smiled repeatedly as he testified, in what he explained was a nervous habit.
Other family members who have testified in Ramos’ 3-month-old triple-murder trial have depicted him as a confused boy who grew up without parents in rural El Salvador. He came to the United States at age 13 to join his mother, but life here was no better than in his native country, Ramos said.
He testified that he spoke little English and that his Spanish was a “country” version that set him apart from his peers. His mother called him “gay” if he cried, and her boyfriends beat him, he said.
His mother often told him, “I wish you were never born,” Ramos testified.
He said he had run away from home several times and eventually found refuge in an offshoot of the MS-13 gang, 20th Street. Previous witnesses said Ramos later joined another MS-13 offshoot, Pasadena Locos Sureños.
It was as a member of that gang, prosecutors say, that Ramos opened fire from a car June 22, 2008, on the occupants of a Honda Civic on Maynard Street in the Excelsior neighborhood. Ramos thought at least one of the men in the car was a member of a gang that had shot a Pasadena Locos Sureños member that morning, prosecutors say.
Inside the Honda were Tony Bologna, 48, and his three sons, none of whom was in a gang. Bologna and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were killed. A third son, Andrew Bologna, now 21, was unharmed and testified earlier that Ramos was the shooter.
Ramos’ attorney, Marla Zamora, has said he was only driving the car used during the killings and that another gang member fired the fatal shots.
Under questioning from Zamora, Ramos talked about his decision to leave 20th Street and join Pasadena Locos Sureños.
Other witnesses have said Ramos didn’t think 20th Street was aggressive enough. Ramos, however, said he had left after a stint in the Log Cabin Ranch juvenile lockup on the Peninsula, where he said he had started getting his life together and talking to rival gang members.
When he got out, 20th Street had changed leadership and word of his association with rivals had gotten around, Ramos said. That made him a target and frequently resulted in his being “regulated” – beaten up for breaking rules such as wearing a red 49ers jacket, the color of the gang’s rivals.
“I was frustrated with the situation and I was trying to do other things,” Ramos said. “I felt like every time I did something, I’d be regulated.”
