1 killed, 8 hurt in shooting at South L.A. party
A gunman opened fire at a late-night party in South Los Angeles, killing one person and wounding eight others in a shooting that sent revelers crashing through fences to escape bullets, authorities said Saturday.
Devon Hakilmy, 19, was pronounced dead at the scene and eight people were taken to nearby hospitals, two of them in critical condition, after the shooting Friday night. A Los Angeles Police Department source familiar with the investigation said detectives believe Hakilmy was not a target of the gunman.
Police questioned a man early Saturday but later described him as a witness to the shooting, not a suspect. Law enforcement sources said detectives had identified a possible suspect but declined to release his name.
Another police source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said investigators suspect that a dispute over a woman sparked the shooting.
Police described the gathering as a “flier party” in which guests were charged an admission fee.
Armando Valencia, one of the partygoers, recalled hearing shots and feeling bullets whiz over his head as he dropped to the ground in the backyard of the house in the South Park neighborhood, southeast of USC.
“You can hear the sound of it, then hear the impact. It was wild,” he said.
As he lay in the backyard, Valencia felt a burning in his stomach. He felt for blood and a hole in the skin. Instead, he had a bruise. Officers later told him he had been hit either by a ricocheted bullet or a hot shell casing.
“It looks like I got hit by a paint ball,” said Valencia, 26, a computer technician. “I got lucky.”
Sitting down to a breakfast special at Tom’s Burgers after the all-night ordeal, Valencia said the event was one of a number of parties that are promoted through social technology and occur every weekend around Los Angeles.
Valencia was with friends Friday night when one of them received a text: “47th and Main.” The message was clear: a party, happening now.
Most people, like Valencia and his friends, attend such parties not knowing anyone, much less the reason for the gathering. Word spreads via Facebook or texts. Rarely is there serious security at the door.
Valencia attends a couple of such parties a month but before Friday had never attended one where a shooting had broken out. This party, he said, “was definitely a reality check.”
He and his friends showed up at the house in the 200 block of East 47th Street about 11:20 p.m. A birthday party was in full swing — with a DJ pumping club music over a backyard crowded with people. Valencia said he knew no one but his friends at the party.
Then, 20 minutes after they had arrived, someone screamed that a man had a gun.
“It was sudden, out of nowhere,” Valencia said in a telephone interview after spending hours at the police station with dozens of other partygoers. “He started shooting. People were panicking, running, dropping to the floor, including myself. All the fences were toppled. It was chaos.”
Valencia said he was in the backyard, about 12 feet from the shooter. He neither saw the man nor knew who he was.
Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this report.
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