Redondo Beach woman remembers slain husband
It’s 9 o’clock on a Wednesday morning and Monica Reynolds is staring in disbelief at the bouquets and candles lining the sidewalk outside her family’s home, remembering a man who was murdered just five days before – her husband Bobby Reynolds, 38, her high school sweetheart and the father of her two children, an eight-year-old son who bears his name and his dimples and a 13-year-old daughter who inherited his wide, gap-toothed smile.
Bobby and Monica at Red Robin this past Father’s Day. Photo courtesy of Monica Reynolds
“This is a man I’ve spent half my life with,” Monica says, fighting to keep her tears at bay. “I sat here all day yesterday, trying to piece it all together. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe that I spent 20-plus years with this person and I’m never going to see him again.”
Yesterday she sat on this sidewalk all day long. And as the sun burned bright and the world went about its business, she remembered Bobby – the teenager who pursued her persistently when she was 15 and “didn’t like boys yet,” the lover who kept careful watch over her when she went out dancing, the father who told his three-year-old he would buy her “as many princess dolls as she could carry” and who loved to take his family out for churros at the Redondo Beach Pier, the man with “big, pretty blue eyes” that a family friend likened to the Gerber Baby’s.
“He loved his kids so much,” Monica says, and pauses. “He loved us so much. He couldn’t leave without saying it. ‘I love you. I love you and my babies. You guys are my world, you guys are my life.’
“And he was our world. It was like our world was the four of us. No matter what anyone else did or said, we were our world. Everything we did was based around each other. I can’t see life going on without him.”
She knows Bobby is no longer here, lying lifeless on this sidewalk, but she can’t tear herself away from this spot. It’s the last place she saw him.
“I just want to sit here with him,” she says, her eyes trained on the makeshift memorial. “I want to lay here with him. Last night I thought, ‘I’ll go get a blanket and a pillow and lay here with him.’ I didn’t want to go in last night because I didn’t want to leave him here by himself.
“My rational side of my mind is thinking he’s never coming back but my other part of my mind – whatever part that is – is saying, ‘When is he coming back? He can’t be gone forever. Bobby’s always fine. He’s always here.’
“I’m still waiting for him to show up. I don’t go to sleep at night. I lay in bed and ask him, ‘Are you here? Where are you at?”
In her mind Monica replays, second by excruciating second, the evening her world fell apart.
It was Friday night and she’d gone to Little Caesars to pick up pizzas with her daughter in tow. When they drove away, Bobby was sitting on a ledge outside her family’s Lilienthal Lane home, waiting for her return.
He left her a voicemail at 7:50 p.m., and she called him right back to tell him she was on her way.
Monica pulled up 10 minutes later to find a gathering of frantic people outside her home. Immediately she knew something was amiss.
The scene of a murder Friday night on Ralston and Lilienthal in Redondo Beach. Photo
“I saw my mom,” she begins. “She put her hand up like a gun and I read her lips – she said ‘Somebody shot him’ and she was crying. We were waiting for him to get up. We were like, ‘Why aren’t you responding to us?! Get up!’”
Monica dropped the pizzas she was holding and her eyes went to the sidewalk, where her husband was lying on the ground, apparently shot from behind.
“What was he doing? Looking at a text? I want to know everything that happened. Did he feel anything? I know his last thoughts were, ‘Where are you Monica?’”
She looks at me, her eyes pleading for answers to questions she can’t silence.
“Why would somebody do this to him?”
Police have not confirmed whether they suspect a motive. Monica Reynolds is racking her brain for a reason or an explanation, but can find none.
Bobby, a diabetic who had been recently hospitalized and was collecting disability payments, was shot multiple times at close range by a man witnesses saw fleeing to a silver Chrysler 300, a vehicle police later found abandoned several blocks from the crime scene.
Erick Julian Ortega, who police are calling a suspect in Friday night’s shooting in Redondo Beach. Photo courtesy RBPD
The vehicle is registered to Erick Julian Ortega, 27, who Redondo Beach police say is a documented NSR-13 gang member with a criminal history that includes robbery and narcotics offenses. This week police confirmed Ortega as a suspect, and said he is believed to be on the loose, armed, and dangerous.
Police have reason to believe Ortega communicates with other NSR-13 members in state prisons, and also suspect he traffics in narcotics and distributes some of the profit to inmates in state custody.
Monica does not recognize Ortega’s face, and she is certain Bobby did not recognize that face, either.
“We know all the same people,” she said. “I’ve been with him since I was 15. In all these years of me knowing Bobby, that face that I see on the news – that face of the devil – never in my life have I seen it. And it’s driving me insane.”
She denies the possibility that the murder was the result of a young gang member “making a name for himself.”
“That was an execution,” she said. “That’s not making a name. Someone who shoots a man from behind – that’s a coward.
“I don’t want this monster hurt. I want the police to catch him. I want to see that he’s in custody. I want him to go and try and survive in prison. If you can be a coward and shoot a man from behind, you try and survive in prison.”
She believes there are people harboring Ortega or refusing to come forward with news of his whereabouts and it makes her angry – “They are just as guilty as him,” she says icily – but she trusts that the police will find Bobby’s killer.
Police Chief Joe Leonardi said at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting that detectives have been working 18-hour days since the murder.
Police tape blocks off the scene of Bobby Reynolds’ murder. Photo
“We have various items of evidence we believe will help lead to the identification and capture of the suspect and what we’re working on right now is trying to identify where that suspect is and take that person into custody,” he said.
Chief Leonardi said the shooting was not a drive-by but a targeted “assassination.”
On Saturday, two Lomita residents – Eduardo Losa, 42, and girlfriend Shelby Johnston, 29 – were arrested on respective charges of murder and being accessory to murder. Losa is also a documented member of NSR-13 – also known as North Side Redondo – whose criminal record includes charges of assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, and parole violation.
Police did not divulge the nature of their alleged involvement in Reynolds’ murder.
Police have released Eduardo Antonio Losa, who was booked on murder charges related to Friday night’s drive-by shooting in North Redondo. Photo courtesy RBPD
Then, on Tuesday, both Losa and Johnston were released from custody, not because detectives believe they were uninvolved in the murder but because the law stipulates that police have exactly 48 hours to either discharge or arraign a defendant. Police said they needed more time.
“The case is still being investigated,” Captain Jeff Hink of the RBPD said. “And unfortunately… while I wish we could solve it in 30 minutes, we can’t. We still have more work to do in terms of the investigation and analysis and evidence.
“We still think the two have involvement in the murder; however, in the interest of justice and following the law, which requires us to discharge them no later than 48 hours after we arrest them, we elected to let them go pending further investigation.”
Shelby Ann Johnston was released after being booked on charges of being accessory to murder. Photo courtesy RBPD
According to a mutual coworker, Losa and Ortega were employed at the same local restaurant. The same coworker called Ortega a “quiet, sweet kid” who recently fathered a baby.
Ortega is described as male, Hispanic, 5’6” and about 160 pounds with brown hair and eyes and distinctive tattoos, including a marijuana leaf on his right arm, a naked woman on his right shoulder, a clown on his left shoulder, the letters “HA” on his head, and the following phrases on his chest – “Padre Pardon me,” “Redondo Beach,” and “Father forgive me.” On his neck are tattooed the words “bitch please” and across his abdomen, the words “Redondo how do you want it.”
Police are warning members of the public not to approach Ortega if they spot him, but instead to call 911. Anyone with any information about Ortega’s whereabouts or the murder is urged to call (310) 379-2477 or (310) 937-6685 or to text (310) 339-2362 or email crimetips@redondo.org.
And as for Monica Reynolds, she is determined to see justice served.
“I’ve never had to walk out of my house ever and look around before I tell my kids it’s okay to come out,” she said. “How dare he take that away from me – me, who’s lived here 36 years of my life.”
Redondo Beach is her hometown and that of her parents – “We know everybody around here, and everybody knows us,” she said – and Monica can’t understand why a stranger would taint it for her and her children.
“I believe God takes you when it’s your time but this is not how God takes you,” she continued, gesturing toward the pavement still marked with traces of blood. “This is the devil.”
Capt. Jeff Hink talks to reporters about the slaying of Bobby Darren Reynolds on Friday night. Photo