By The Porterville Recorder : By Aaron Burgin
Twelve-year-old Sandra Caballero said she awoke at 4:30 a.m. Thursday to the sound of three gunshots coming from an apartment building on the corner of her street. “I wanted to look out the window, but my mom told me not to,” Caballero said. Nearly 12 hours earlier, police raided that same apartment building and arrested three people.

Seven hours after Sandra’s rude awakening, a bicyclist eastbound on Oak Avenue near F Street noticed a man in the Porter Slough. He called out to the man, but the man did not respond. The bicyclist called police. Six hours later, police determined the man was the city’s first homicide victim in 2007. He died from an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

Family members on scene identified the victim as Clinton Williams, 21, of Porterville. Police will release his name after the Coroner’s Office completes an autopsy and next of kin are notified. Police said they did not want to speculate whether the raid, the gunshot reports and the death were related.

“We are investigating a homicide,” Porterville police Lt. Chris Dempsie said Thursday afternoon. “We are looking into all possible connections.” No arrests were made at the time of publication.

Numerous neighbors reported hearing gunshots near the apartment complex on the southwest corner of F and Oak around 4:30 a.m. “My mom was awake around 4, and she said she heard three gunshots,” said Robert Almanza, 17, who lives in a mobile home just south of the slough. “Then we wake up this morning, and this is going on. It’s crazy.”

Police responded to the area shortly after the “shots fired” call and searched for 14 minutes, but found nothing, Dempsie said. Detectives continued to investigate the homicide well into the evening hours, combing the slough, interviewing residents for any clues and trying to retrace Williams’ activity prior to his death.

Dempsie said no weapon was found in the slough where Williams’ body was located. “There was no indication that the wound was self-inflicted,” Dempsie said.

It was not the first time police responded to the block during the 12-hour period of frame. Special Investigations Unit detectives raided a unit in the apartment complex on the corner Wednesday afternoon, seized an undisclosed amount of cocaine and arrested three men.

Neighbors said the apartment had recently become an area frequented by purported gang members. “It’s gotten really bad over the past few years,” Vicki Caballero said.

Williams’ death shattered the silence in what had been a homicide-free year in the city. There were four homicides in the Porterville city limits by this time last year, and another that occurred one block outside of the city proper. By year’s end, a record nine homicides were reported in the city limits.

Porterville police Chief Chuck McMillan said officers will continue to remain vigilant to ensure the homicide remains an isolated occurrence. “If we knew the circumstances of this one, we would know what we were up against,” McMillan said. “I think we will know where we are at when we find out who the suspects are.”

Thursday also marked the one-year anniversary of a botched armed robbery at Crescent Jewelers that ended when the suspect, Alexandro Rivera, 18, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Not wanting to comment on the irony, McMillan said the events last year, and the two events this year are a “sad commentary” on how society has changed. “It just seems that people have no sense of the value of human life. Society has changed a lot over the past 20 years and we have to keep working to change that,” McMillan said. “The one thing I can say about the events today and last year is that they were all tragedies.”