Police Chief Updates City on Shooting Death of 13-Year-Old Boy: “We Will Catch These Criminals, and We Will Catch Them Quickly”

Pasadena Police Chief John Perez met with reporters on the steps of City Hall Sunday morning to update a shocked and grieving community on the death of a 13-year-old boy who was at home in his bedroom Saturday night when he was killed by a stray bullet.

The unidentified boy was playing a video game and other members of his family were at home in the 900 block of N. Raymond Ave. when the gunfire occurred at around 6:12 p.m., Lt. William Grisafe said.

The bullet came from somewhere outside of the house and struck the child, Grisafe said.

Multiple shots were fired, but police did not know whether the shooter fired from a vehicle or was on foot.

Chief Perez said that officers in the area responded in under a minute and used CPR, but the boy died shortly afterward at a local hospital.

The boy was identified by family members as Iran Moreno-Balvaneda, KABC7 reported.

“We believe that these rounds were not intended for anybody inside that home, but we need more to confirm that. Today we will conduct outreach with the residents, and the family, as well as the school district,” Perez said.

“We don’t know who did this yet, but we will catch these criminals, and we will catch them quickly.”

Pasadena City Councilmember John J. Kennedy implored the shooter to come forward.

“To the person who thought so little of all of us to fire a gun in our neighborhood and take this young life: The consequence of your thoughtless action is grief and suffering beyond words. Turn yourself in.”

Kennedy also urged anyone who was with or knows the shooter to turn them in.

Perez said police were poring over home surveillance footage from the neighborhood.

“We’re looking at all the available video that we have,” Pasadena Police Chief John Perez said Sunday at a morning news conference at City Hall. “There’s so much we have to look at, because there’s hours and hours of it. … We don’t just look at the time it occurred. We go from before and after and we pull so much from so many places, it takes a lot of time. And so we still have to go back today and knock on doors and try to find more.”

“He was doing what 13-year-olds do,” said Perez of the young victim. “He was in his bedroom playing a video game. His brothers and sisters and his parents were in the home as well. He was a straight-A student at a local school, and spends a lot of time in his room, studying. And today he’s not there.”

“We hear words like ‘tragedy’ and ‘senseless,’ but that gets old to me. This just needs to stop. We need to put people in jail for doing this , and we need to bring our community back together, and we need to bring everyone together to make sure that we solve these types of incidents.”

“We have to ask ourselves, ‘What do we want to do about this as a community?’ This gun violence needs to stop. The community has been enormously supportive with this incident and they have been out there with us. We are all here together with this.”

“This just needs to stop,” Perez said.

As of Sunday morning’s press conference, police did not have any suspect information. The motive for the shooting remains unknown.

“What occurred tonight is both horrific and unimaginable,” Mayor Victor Gordo said late Saturday night “My heart goes out to the family of this young man. Pasadena is in pain tonight!”

Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call Pasadena Police at (626)- 744-4241 or report information anonymously by calling “Crime Stoppers” by dialing (800) 222-TIPS (8477), use your smartphone by downloading the “P3 Tips” Mobile APP on Google Play or the Apple App Store or by using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org.