Community comes together after stabbing death

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Martin Carachure stood with nearly 100 relatives, friends an neighbors on the front lawn of his parent’s home on the 600 block of San Pascual Street last night, less than a block from where his 16-year-old brother, Lorenzo Valentin Carachure, was stabbed to death in a gang fight on Monday night.
He didn’t curse the people, or person who stabbed his brother (the police have not made any arrests), or throw his hands in the air to ask a God, any God, how such a thing could happen.
Instead he gazed upon the dozens of men, women and children praying around candles and flowers that were propped up on a card table in the yard -- a makeshift memorial, and said he didn’t know how to solve gang violence, or what he would tell the mayor, or a cop if he could.

All he could say for sure is that right now, in the aftermath of his brother’s death, this tight-knit community had come together.
“When the hard times come we work together,” Carachure said.
Carachure, 23, said he hopes the memorial will generate enough money to send his brother’s body back to Mexico.
Two people with white signs painted with the message “Donation 4 Carachure J.R. to send him back to Mexico,” solicited passing vehicles for donations.
While some cars briefly stopped to deposit money into the small boxes, others sped by, nearly hitting the solicitors.
Josefina Ayala, 27, who lives near the Carachure family, was one of the people standing in the street, asking for donations.
“We’re all neighbors,” Ayala said. “We try to help each other. We try to do what we can to help other people.”
Ayala said the community is tight knit and that the violence could have been committed by someone from the other side of town, or even from out of town.
“You never know when bad people are coming,” Ayala said.
Ayala said if she could tell Santa Barbara City leaders on thing, it would be that they shouldn’t make statements about something that they don’t even know about.
Juan Rios, 18, one of Carachure’s cousins said the death of Lorenzo is “unexpected” and “hard to take.”
Despite the large gathering last night that in any other neighborhood and at any other time could have been a midsummer Bar-B-Q, Rios said the area is tough to live in.
“It’s pretty hard living right here,” Rios said.
Jose Rios, also one of Carachure’s cousins, said “it’s just sad killing people in your own race.”
Jose Rios said the streets have gotten considerably rougher in the past four months and he has has his own theories about why.
“Ever since the kid [15-year-old Luis Angel Linares] died on State Street it’s been getting more dangerous on the streets.”
Jose Rios also had theories on how to help quell the gang violence.
“To get more police involved in this,” he said. “To get more police on the streets.”