Joey mendoza biography

For 12-year-old Joey Mendoza, sources of gang influence were all around — on his neighborhood block and in his own home.

“He was trying to do something different by playing football, but he lived in a neighborhood where Norteños know that’s a Sureño neighborhood,” said reformed gang member Willie Stokes.

Mendoza was walking home to his Lower Ocean neighborhood on Aug.

8, 2012 when he was shot and killed.

He was at the intersection of San Lorenzo Boulevard and Bixby Street when five young men pulled up to him in a car and shot him twice in the back, killing him on the sidewalk. All five of the suspects were documented gang members from Watsonville between the ages of 15 and 19.

Stokes, who coached Mendoza in football the summer before his murder, said he came from a background with heavy gang involvement, though Mendoza himself was not a gang member.

“Joey was a kid whose family was all gang-entrenched,” Stokes said.

“He lived in a neighborhood