Veasna F. Pich, 20, appears in District Court yesterday after being arrested in connection with the beating death of Vicheth Klakratok, 23.

The Providence Journal / ANDREW DICKERMAN

PROVIDENCE — Some local gang members have been fuming for months, angered by incidents of vandalism to cars, gunshots being fired into houses and physical assaults, the police said yesterday.

That anger exploded early Sunday morning, according to the police, when members of the Hanover Boyz street gang confronted a member of the Young Bloods gang and chased him to his death.

The police quickly arrested two suspects, both Hanover Boyz, and charged them with murder in the slaying of Vicheth Klakratok, 23, of 110 Atlantic Ave., Elmwood. Klakratok was struck in the head multiple times with a club or pipe and fell in the middle of Cranston Street in the West End, dead from blunt-force trauma, according to the police and Special Assistant Attorney General James Baum.

In an unrelated homicide dating to last October, the police also announced yesterday that they have arrested a woman and charged her with murder in the stabbing death of an illegal immigrant from Mexico, David De La Rosa, inside the Comfort Zone sports bar on Public Street in Elmwood.

Looking to head off retaliation for Sunday’s gang attack, extra police patrols and streetworkers from the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence fanned out into the neighborhoods. Tension is high, said Deputy Police Chief Paul J. Kennedy.

Detectives also are searching for at least two more suspects.

“We’re still working the case. There’s a lot more to come,” said Maj. Stephen Campbell, commander of the police Investigative Division.

The police so far have charged Veasna F. Pich, 20, of 172 Whitmarsh St., in the West End, and a 17-year-old West End youth, whose name was withheld, with murder and murder conspiracy.

As the police relate it, this is what happened at about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, as a light snow fell:

Klakratok had parked his Acura on the street near a 7-Eleven store at Cranston Street and Huntington Avenue. While Klakratok and one or more other Young Bloods were standing on the 7-Eleven property, some Hanover Boyz approached in what investigators believe was a planned encounter, and a disturbance erupted.

At some point, Klakratok broke away from the encounter and ran for his life, chased by at least several individuals. They caught up to him at Cranston and Benedict streets and beat him to death. A witness saw Pich hit his enemy in the head with a weapon, possibly a baseball bat, Baum said in court, and the police were alerted by a telephone call to 911.

An emergency medical service technician from the Fire Department pronounced Klakratok dead at the scene, and his body was taken to the office of the state medical examiner.

Alerted by one or more witnesses, the police began looking for a dark Chevrolet Suburban that allegedly fled the scene. Patrolman David Allen, in what Campbell and Kennedy called a fine arrest, spotted the Suburban on Bridgham Street in the West End and made a solo apprehension of two suspects, one of whom was the 17-year-old who was later charged. The second occupant of the Suburban was released.

The Hanover Boyz also attacked Klakratok’s Acura, the police said, smashing the windows and headlights. The car was gone by the time the police arrived, but they learned later that an associate of Klakratok had driven it away and parked it in a garage in Elmwood.

“It is tragic that we are arresting a young man for murder,” Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said at a news conference at the Public Safety Complex yesterday. “It would have only been more tragic” if an arrest had not been made. The homicide is Providence’s first of the year.

The afternoon before the slaying, the police arrested a relative of the 17-year-old suspect and charged him with a firearms crime. Campbell said that despite that arrest, the police did not have an inkling that violence was about to occur.

Patrolman Jonathan A. Kantorski was on patrol late Saturday afternoon in the vicinity of Cranston and Althea streets in the West End when he saw a car being driven by Christopher Lom, 18, of 46 Hanover St., in the West End, a member of the Hanover Boyz.

Kantorski had been tipped by members of the police gang unit that Lom may be carrying a firearm and that Lom’s vehicle still bore bullet holes from a recent shooting. Realizing that officers were near, according to the police, Lom turned into a parking lot, allegedly without using his turn signal, and Kantorski moved in.

Kantorski said a nervous Lom admitted that he had “a piece,” or a firearm, in his possession, and Kantorski said he found a Hi-Point Firearms 9mm pistol with eight cartridges in the magazine, and with the serial numbers obliterated, tucked in the waistband of the suspect’s trousers. In a search of his car, officers said they also found an expandable baton that is usable as a weapon.

Lom was charged with three offenses: possession of an unlicensed firearm; possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number; and possession of a prohibited weapon, the baton. He also was issued a traffic court summons for failure to use his turn signal.

Pich, barefoot and dressed in a white jumpsuit made of a paper byproduct that was given him by the police, was brought before District Court Judge Michael A. Higgins yesterday afternoon. In a soft voice, he answered a few questions from the judge. Asked if he could afford a lawyer, he replied, “No.”

Higgins halted the brief arraignment in order to allow Assistant Public Defender David Levy to confer with Pich, and when the judge resumed, he ordered Pich held without bail pending a bail hearing Feb. 12 and referred him to the public defender’s office for representation.

No plea was entered, as the law does not provide for pleas to felony charges in District Court.

The 17-year-old was brought to Family Court and ordered held at the Rhode Island Training School. Assistant Attorney General J. Patrick Youngs III said the attorney general’s office will seek to have the defendant waived out of Family Court and charged as an adult in Superior Court.

The police seized the clothes of both suspects for evidence, leaving Pich in the jumpsuit.

In connection with the Oct. 13 slaying in the Comfort Zone, the police announced the arrest of Penny Juan, 36, who gave her address as 66 Highland Ave., Roxbury, Mass. Campbell said detectives had identified Juan, who was living in Rhode Island at the time of the slaying, as a suspect early in their investigation but that Juan had left the state.

The detectives learned that Juan was planning to return last week — she also was named in Rhode Island arrest warrants for minor offenses — and on Friday they captured her on Friendship Street.

She was charged with murder in a special arraignment at the police station Saturday morning and is being held at the Adult Correctional Institutions. A bail hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 13.

The police learned of the slaying when they were called to the Comfort Zone at about 1 a.m., Oct. 13, and found the victim, De La Rosa, 27, of 99 Ford St., in the West End, lying dead in the street after having been stabbed during a barroom brawl.

The police are still working to confirm De La Rosa’s correct name — they said it could be De La Rosa Ruiz or a variation — and to learn something of his background in Mexico. Campbell said De La Rosa and Juan were not acquainted as far as the police know.

gsmith@projo.com