2 Shot to Death in N. Hollywood as Simmering Feud Boils Over

A feud between neighbors in a North Hollywood apartment complex escalated from a long series of minor arguments to a gun battle that left a woman and her son dead and two men seriously injured, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

One of the wounded men was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Gunfire and screaming lasted as long as 10 minutes Tuesday night at the Rancho Vega apartments in the 10500 block of Edison Way near Cahuenga Boulevard, police said. When the ruckus was over about 10:50 p.m., Helen Wittman, 42, and her 20-year-old son, Dan, were dead--their bodies sprawled across the front porch of their home.

Two other tenants were also wounded in the gun battle. Enrique Marta, 25, was in critical condition at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. Fernando Cordero, 23, was in serious condition at Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills.

Police on Wednesday arrested Cordero on suspicion of murder.

Trash Dumped in Car

Lt. Ron LaRue said the fatal confrontation between the tenants from three side-by-side apartments in the 128-unit complex began when Dan Wittman dumped trash into a car belonging to Marta. Marta saw Wittman dump the trash and confronted him, LaRue said.

“There was a scuffle, and Cordero and Mrs. Wittman became involved,” LaRue said. “It escalated into a shooting.”

LaRue noted that the sequence of events in the gun battle was still under investigation, but that Dan Wittman and Cordero--a tenant who sided with Marta during a long running feud with the Wittmans--went into their apartments, armed themselves and came outside.

Police believe that both Wittmans were killed by blasts from a shotgun fired by Cordero. The wounded men were shot by Dan Wittman with a handgun before he died, LaRue said. It appeared Mrs. Wittman and Marta did not fire any weapons, he said.

Shouting, Shooting

The shouting and shooting lasted several minutes, according to neighborhood residents.

“It was the most horrible thing I ever heard in my life,” said a woman who lives across the street. She said she stayed on the floor of her home until the gunfire ended.

“I thought it was going to come right inside my home,” she said. “There were shots and screaming and more shots. I heard a woman screaming, ‘Help me,’ and somebody else screaming, ‘No more guns, No more guns.’ It lasted about 10 minutes, but it seemed longer.”

Al Logan, manager of the complex, and other neighbors said the Wittman family, including a husband and daughter, had been residents of Rancho Vega for at least 15 years. Marta, married and with a young child, and Cordero, whose wife is pregnant, moved into the apartments within the last year, Logan said.

Logan and police said the three families had been involved in a feud for at least six months. One neighbor described a lengthy screaming match between members of the families in front of their apartments a few weeks ago.

Logan said the car into which Wittman had dumped trash had been parked in a no-parking area in an alley between a row of garages and the six-unit building where the three families lived. The infraction of the apartment building’s parking rules could have been what spurred the trash dumping and the subsequent argument and shooting, he said.

“There was bad blood between them,” Logan said. “They were always making complaints against each other. Anything could set them off. But it was always petty stuff like the parking, too much party noise, loud music.

“It was never anything very serious. A lot of it wasn’t even justified. One would just make a complaint about the other, and then the other would make a complaint right back. There was never any kind of violence that we knew of until this,” Logan said.

The manager said at least two of the tenants involved in Tuesday’s shooting had displayed guns before.

“When a car or burglar alarm would go off, they’d come out with guns to see what was going on,” Logan said of Cordero and Marta.