Teenage gang member held in toddler’s slaying

A teenage member of a Los Angeles-based street gang was arrested Wednesday on charges of firing a handgun at a porch full of family members in San Bernardino, killing a 3-year-old girl and seriously wounding a pregnant woman and her young daughter.

Police say Monday’s shooting appears to have been an act of revenge against a man who lived in the house who — an hour earlier — stopped the suspect from beating a woman on a sidewalk a few doors away.

Investigators with the San Bernardino Police Department, aided by eyewitness accounts of the shooting, identified the suspect within 24 hours and the agency’s gang unit tracked him down Wednesday evening, two blocks from the crime scene.

“I make a commitment: He will never come out to harm another citizen in this county again,” San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos said at an afternoon news conference at police headquarters.

“We’re going to make sure justice is done in this case,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen to our citizens, especially our babies.”

Brandon Taray Barnes, 19, of San Bernardino faces one charge of murder and seven counts of attempted murder after allegedly firing a dozen bullets at family members gathered outside the home.

The shooting occurred about 7:45 p.m. Monday in the 1300 block of D Street, six blocks from the Central Police Station, as relatives at the home of Sophia Cardona were about to sit down for dinner.

Nylah Franco-Torrez, 3, was shot in the head and pronounced dead at a hospital.

Cardona said her granddaughter La-Donna Howie, 21, and Howie’s 4-year-old daughter Justine, were wounded in the gunfire. Howie, who is five months pregnant, was listed in stable condition at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton. Her fetus was unharmed and in good condition, police said.

Justine was in extremely critical condition at Loma Linda University Medical Center with a head wound. Relatives said she has regained consciousness and is “a real fighter,” Cardona said.

News of the arrest was a relief to the family, Cardona said, because they feared the suspect could return and open fire again.

“I’m just glad he’s off the street. He can’t hurt anyone,” Cardona said. “He did think about what he was going to do, but he didn’t care that children were outside.”

The investigation led to Barnes within hours of the shooting, pieced together with information from eyewitnesses and other leads developed by the Police Department’s gang unit and homicide investigators, police spokeswoman Lt. Gwendolyn Waters said.

Police officials declined to release the details of what led to Barnes’ arrest, saying they don’t want to taint testimony from other potential witnesses. Waters said that footage from video surveillance cameras did not lead to the suspect, contradicting previous accounts from the victims’ relatives, who said that’s what they were told by authorities.

On Wednesday a little after 5 p.m., officers with the gang unit saw Barnes on a bicycle and ran after him until they were able to grab him two blocks from where the shooting occurred.

Waters said there was no evidence that the shooting was gang-related or that Barnes knew the victims or any of their relatives.

Barnes has relatives in the San Bernardino area, not far from the crime scene, and had a warrant for his arrest stemming from a loitering charge, according to police and court records.

The cause of the shooting appeared to have been revenge against the Good Samaritan who stopped Barnes from beating a woman on a nearby sidewalk. The woman was interviewed by detectives, Waters said.

“It showed not only a lack of conscience, it shows cowardice,” Police Chief Keith Kilmer said. “A shooting like this doesn’t just affect the families, the victims, it affects the entire community.”

phil.willon@latimes.com