Masked Man From Other Car Opens Fire : Two Women Shot After Minor Collision

Two women were wounded, one critically, by a masked gunman who opened fire on them after a car in which he was a passenger rear-ended their car early today at an intersection in the Vermont district, sheriff’s deputies said.

Terree Guiden, 21, and her cousin, Renee Smith, 20, had stopped for a red light at the intersection of Western Avenue and 108th Street, just east of Inglewood, when their car was lightly bumped from behind by a car carrying two men.

After seeing that no damage had been done, the two women waved the other car on, Smith said. Her cousin had just returned to her car when a man wearing a red ski mask jumped out of the other car and fired several shots at Guiden, wounding her in the neck and chest.

“She was slumped across the stick,” said Smith. “I tried to get out of the car, but he saw me and came after me.”

The suspect then fired four shots at Smith, wounding her in the scalp, back and arm.

“I heard the other car speed away,” Smith said at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, where she is in good condition. “Terree said she couldn’t move, so I sat on her hip and tried to drive the car home.”

She lost control of the car after a few blocks and crashed it on the sidewalk, she said. She then ran two blocks to her home, where a friend called the sheriff.

Guiden was in very critical condition following surgery at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.

Sheriff’s spokesman Mason Kenny described the gunman as a slender male, approximately 23 years old and 5 feet, 5 inches tall. The driver of the car was described as light skinned, about 25.