Teen Gang Member Arrested in Fatal Shooting of Boy in Park

A teen-age member of a South-Central Los Angeles gang was arrested Thursday in the death of a 9-year-old boy caught in a gunfight between rival gang factions that erupted in a playground, police said.

The identity of the 17-year-old gunman, who was booked into Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murder, was withheld because he is a minor, said Detective Verne King of the Police Department’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit.

Police credited community outrage with the speedy arrest Thursday morning. Without revealing how police were led to the suspect, King said many people, including witnesses, volunteered information. The public is usually reluctant to come forward in gang-related crimes, King said, but the boy’s death seemed to generate more concern.

“Everyone feels for the death of an innocent person, but an innocent 9-year-old is a little bit more,” King said.

DeAndre Brown was hit by a stray bullet on Wednesday while playing in the sandbox of Mount Carmel Park at 70th and Hoover streets. The boy, a fourth-grader at Loren Miller Elementary School, died a half hour later. Witnesses said two or three youths, one brandishing a rifle, walked to a corner of the small park and fired through a chain link fence at rival gang members, who returned fire.

A day after the murder, the child’s loved ones expressed outrage and remorse over the shooting that occurred in a neighborhood that one expert called the most gang-ridden in the county. “I can’t understand why that gun can be in the hands of another child. Who’s providing the kids with the guns?” asked Shirley Dorsey, DeAndre’s 47-year-old foster mother. “Children are killing children.”

An educational aide at the boy’s school, she said she wanted the responsible gang members to pay for their crime.

“I think he (the gunman) should be punished,” Dorsey said in an interview at her home, five blocks from the park. “He did an adult crime. He took a child’s life. He should pay the price for it.

“My son had to pay the price, and I don’t think it’s fair.”

Dorsey, who was at a PTA meeting in Dallas, said news of her foster son’s death came over the phone.

“They first told me he was shot in the shoulder, and I said he’s a 9-year-old, he’ll bounce back,” she said. “And then my brother called back. . . . I don’t remember anything else.

“We’ve gone to that park a lot of times and had a great time. My family will never go to that park again,” said Dorsey, who has three other foster children and two children and is now worrying about how she will pay for DeAndre’s funeral.

Gang expert Tony Massengale said the area around the park --which is bordered by King Boulevard, Imperial Highway, Van Ness and Compton avenues--has the most gang crime in the county.

“There’s no buffer zone between the gangs and the park becomes the buffer zone separating the gangs,” said Massengale, assistant director of the L.A. County Community Youth Gang Services Project.

Experts estimate that there are a minimum of 100 black and 100 Latino gangs operating in the area--with perhaps 20,000 members--many participating in drug trafficking, Massengale said. Moreover, he said, violent crime has steadily increased after a crackdown at the time of the 1984 Olympics.

Gang members are interested “in the rivalry and not the consequences” of their actions, he said. “Somebody didn’t care.”

“When does somebody start caring about the children?” he asked.

The boy’s fourth-grade teacher remembered him as a quiet, polite child who was good in English, liked by teachers and classmates and had “all the potential in the world for having a successful life.”

“It’s an awful feeling, such a sense of waste,” Robin Fromhold said. “It’s very tragic and upsetting.”

Although police believe that the suspect fired the shot killing the boy, investigators are continuing to look for accomplices and the members of the targeted gang, King said.

“Our effort to find any others involved has been limited,” King said. “We concentrated on who killed the 9-year-old.”

Unanswered Questions

Police have yet to determine the number of shots fired, the weapons or the number of gang members involved. No other injuries have been reported from the gun battle, King said.

The swings, monkey bars and jungle gyms in the sandbox where DeAndre died were mostly vacant Thursday. Except for one little girl and her father, few ventured to spend the afternoon in the park.

Park Director Robert Jones said he hopes that the park can return to normal in a week. Although the gangs frequent the area and become dangerous when members start to mass, he said he is usually able to spot and defuse the situations. The shooting, he said, was unforeseeable.

He cautioned parents against sheltering their children indoors and stifling their growth.

“You’re going to have to let them live,” Jones said.

Steve Sweigart, 33, said the shooting was a freak accident that children and their parents shouldn’t let drive them from the park.

Facing Gang Members

“It makes it hard for the kids to come here, but either you come to the park or you don’t,” he said. “If the kids leave them (gang members) alone and don’t bother them, nine times out of 10 they don’t bother them.”

His stepdaughter, Sheiquetti Shepard, an 8-year-old who spends many hours playing in the park, said she heard the fatal shots on her way home. Nonetheless, she said she would keep going to the park.

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “My stepfather told me whenever I hear gunshots to duck down or lay down.”