The Region - News from Feb. 13, 1987

An off-duty Los Angeles firefighter was shot and wounded by robbers who accosted him as he left a hospital in a crime-ridden South Los Angeles neighborhood, authorities said. James Carter, 35, was chased several blocks after he was shot in the thigh by one of the three robbers who had tried to take a satchel he carried, Battalion Chief Dean Cathey said. After the robbers gave up their chase, Carter called an ambulance from a pay phone, Cathey said. Carter told fellow firefighters that he visited a cousin hospitalized at Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center before the attack. He said he had stopped at a phone booth near the Nickerson Gardens housing projects to call his family when the attack occurred, Cathey said. Carter was in good condition at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.