Man celebrating his birthday is found fatally shot in a Mercedes in Monterey Park
A 20-year-old man who was shot to death in Monterey Park on Thursday morning after celebrating his birthday was a member of the East Los Angeles College basketball team, authorities said.
Saieed Ivey, a freshman guard on the Huskies team who once played at Simeon High School in Chicago, was found dead inside of a Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot of an apartment complex, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said.
Around 4 a.m., Monterey Park Police officers responded to a call of gunshots heard in the 800 block of West El Repetto Drive, said sheriff’s Lt. Eddie Hernandez.
Officers checked the area and found a gray or dark silver Mercedes-Benz with the lights on, Hernandez said. As officers got closer to the locked car, they saw an unresponsive man in the back seat who had been shot in the upper torso, Hernandez said.
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Paramedics pronounced Ivey dead at the scene.
Calls to the East Los Angeles College basketball team’s coach and a spokesperson for the school were not immediately returned.
Ivey was the competitive middle child in a family of three basketball players in Chicago and played guard alongside a team of young stars at Simeon on Chicago’s south side. Ivey was also childhood friends and teammates with Jabari Parker, a former standout forward at Duke University who was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks with the second overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft.
His mother, Chareda Carter, was choked with emotion after landing in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon. Contacted by a reporter, she was able to say just three words about her son: “An amazing soul.”
Ivey was celebrating his birthday with a group in the L.A. area Wednesday night before returning to the apartment complex where he was found dead, investigators said.
He went to the car and gunshots were reported a short time later, according to Hernandez.
Sandra Simon, who has lived at the complex for three years, said she heard a “bloodcurdling” scream about 3:30 a.m. Simon said she didn’t think much of it, because the complex is close to a college and sometimes students party and get rowdy.
“Sometimes you hear screaming and nothing happens,” she said.
It is unclear if the scream was related to the shooting.
Earlier on Thursday, rumors circulated on social media that Ivey had been killed in a confrontation with police, but sheriff’s officials said that information was incorrect.
Investigators are trying to determine why the man went to the car, Hernandez said. Sheriff’s officials said investigators had yet to determine a motive, but detectives were exploring all possibilities. t
”There are no witnesses to the shooting. Everything is on the table,” Hernandez said.
Chicago Tribune staff writer Marwa Eltagouri contributed to this report.
For more crime news, follow @nicolesantacruz and @JamesQueallyLAT on Twitter.
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UPDATES:
7:11 p.m.: This story was updated with the identitiy of the victim, Saieed Ivey, and information about his background.
This story first published at 4:36 p.m.
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