Junior Soto died in The Square, but he did not live there. The Soto home is a mile north in a predominantly white working-class neighborhood. But many of the Hispanic kids who went to school with the Soto kids do live there, and Carolina and Junior's names are well-known there. The Square is a square mile of close-packed trailer parks and apartment complexes between Cave Creek Road and 32nd Street, and between Greenway and Bell roads. It also has one of the highest rates of juvenile crime in the Valley, according to Maricopa County juvenile-probation records.
Probation officers say the crime rate is primarily a reflection of gang activity.
If the elementary school in The Square is any indicator, at least half of The Square's population is Hispanic. And at night it seems like all of it is. Folks sit on lawn chairs along the sidewalks in front of their apartments. Evenings, Palomino Park is a sea of humanity, nearly all of it Hispanic, hundreds of people playing basketball or volleyball or foosball or picnicking. The white faces of the park's workers stick out like Iraqis at a bar mitzvah.