Stockton Slide to Bankruptcy Measured in More Funerals
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Salvador Cervantes was about to set up a booth with other vendors at the Stockton Flea Market where he sells jewelry when two gunmen demanded his car keys. One fired a shot, Salvador said, and he dropped the keys. The men sped off in his SUV, leaving his 74-year-old father, Ignacio, bleeding to death on the ground from a gunshot wound. He was number 25.
The killing was one of 29 homicides in Stockton, California, so far this year, following a record 58 in 2011, as the city’s slide toward insolvency cut police strength. It was the fifth robbery at gunpoint in three and a half years for Salvador Cervantes.