Star-Crossed Lover Killed by Relative’s Blows, Police Say

It had been a romance likened to a real-life “West Side Story,” a tale of two star-crossed young lovers whose affair ran afoul of a barrio street gang.

But, in the end, this drama’s final act was more freakish than poetic.

Jason Mavers, the former neo-Nazi skinhead who had been threatened by La Verne gang members for dating one of their former “home girls,” died last week after he was struck in the head and chest by his brother-in-law, police said Monday.

Mavers, 18, who just a week before had separated from 15-year-old Yolanda, apparently because of the gang harassment, collapsed Wednesday afternoon in Claremont when an aneurysm caused by the assault ruptured an artery in his head.

David Padilla, 29, of Pomona, who is married to Mavers’ sister, Seferina, was arrested the same day on suspicion of murder but was released Friday pending full results of an autopsy, according to Claremont Police Cmdr. Gary Jenkins.

The assault, which occurred in the driveway of a Claremont home where Mavers was doing yard work, apparently stemmed from a long-standing family dispute that was unrelated to his run-ins with the La Verne gang, Jenkins explained.

“You would think if something was going to happen to him, it would have happened because of the La Verne situation,” Jenkins said. “But it just had to do with the family. It was a verbal battle between the two that escalated.”

La Verne Detective Steve Kirk, who had talked with Jason and Yolanda at length about the harassment, said Yolanda was “pretty shaken up” when he called her about the incident. Her family, who asked that Yolanda’s last name not be used, said she was too upset to make any statements.

Their romance received widespread publicity in June when their skirmishes with Yolanda’s former gang began to appear as regular entries in the La Verne police log.

In all, officers made 10 arrests of gang members in the neighborhood that month for prowling, inciting a fight, threatening a witness and hurling a beer bottle at the couple’s car.

The idea of a street gang harassing an Anglo youth for taking a Latina from their “turf” captured the imagination of dozens of TV producers and movie studios who clamored to turn the tale into what one film executive was tentatively calling “East Side Story.”

But police said the pressure was probably too much for the teen-aged couple. On July 13, they separated. Later that night, while no one was at home, an arsonist torched the tiny house that they had shared with Yolanda’s mother.