Dozens of people had gathered for a family reunion at a modest home in this small farm town last September, when a gang member walked down the sidewalk and fired a shot into the air. Junior Munoz immediately confronted the shooter because there were children attending the family party. A quarrel ensued, and minutes later, Munoz lay dying in the street from a gunshot to the chest. His death marked the third gang-related fatality in nine months in this rural city and served as yet another reminder of the gang violence invading farm towns tucked amid Northwest orchards and fields. Nearly two dozen slayings last year were believed to be related to gang activity east of the Cascade Range, which divides the bustling metropolitan regions in western Washington and Oregon from largely agriculture-driven cities and towns. In Quincy, the slaying of Munoz also marked a turning point for city officials, who agreed to pay $130,000 for a software program that will trace gunshots to the spot where they were fired - a popular tool in the fight against gun violence from Washington, D.C., to Rio de Janeiro, but a relatively new weapon for law enforcement in a region where gunshots are just as likely to be fired by bird hunters. “If we had heard that first shot fired, we would have been there,’’ Quincy Police Chief Richard Ackerman said, expressing the possibility that Munoz might have been saved if the technology had been in use. “What price do you put on a life?’’ The violence in rural America largely attributed to Hispanic gangs is not new, Ackerman said. But law enforcement officials are more aware of the vexing problem and are working harder to address it with schools and parents, who work long hours and often fail to recognize the danger of these new “friends,’’ he said. “They put a wet blanket over your sense of safety and security,’’ Ackerman said. “We try to do everything we can within the law to control them.’’ A private website that tracks gang-related fatalities in the Northwest noted deaths up and down the agricultural region in 2011. In one case, two young boys died in a house fire believed to be set by gang members in Wenatchee, Wash., last August. About six weeks later, on a warm Friday evening, Munoz kept a close eye on the children at a family reunion at his wife’s grandmother’s house. The fun continued well into the evening, as the children and adults alike darted back and forth from the house to a basketball court at the small park across the street. Munoz, 40, was well known in Quincy, a rural town of about 7,000 people 120 miles inland from Seattle. He had helped coach wrestling teams and enlisted volunteers for softball leagues. The gang member he confronted was relatively new to town but well-known to law enforcement officials, who had been keeping an eye on him but found no reason to detain him. He has since fled the area. Days after the shooting, hundreds of people marched through Quincy denouncing gang violence. Munoz’s widow, Raquel Munoz de la Garza, led the marchers in chanting “We want peace!’’ and “Save our kids! Save our town!’’ Junior Munoz had briefly joined a gang when he was 18 but dropped out within a couple of years. His life was focused on his wife and raising their five children, who range in age from 5 to 10, Munoz de la Garza said. “He was a big, strong, handsome, passionate man who was all about me and the kids,’’ she said. “He was the kind of person who didn’t tolerate bullying. He just touched so many hearts.’’ At the grocery store where she works, gang members still file in to shop. “They can’t even look at me,’’ she said. “They all look down.’’ The fallen man’s brother, Lupe Munoz, said the town could be better than it has ever been if not for the gangs. “These people need to get taken off the street,’’ he said. “My brother’s not the first to die, but I hope he’s the last.’’
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