Area Closed Off in Search for Suspect in 2 Slayings

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies cordoned off a residential area in Compton on Tuesday night, searching for a suspect in a drive-by shooting that killed a 6-year-old girl and her father and wounded three other members of an East Compton family as they watched television in their living room.

The deputies said they were looking for George (Junior) Carter, a 27-year-old street gang member named by Sheriff Sherman Block earlier Tuesday as one of two men who fired automatic weapons Sunday evening into a Josephine Court home, killing Irma Saucedo and fatally wounding her father.

Salvador Saucedo, 39, an auto mechanic, died Tuesday morning at Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital of abdominal wounds, authorities said.

Deputies said they received an anonymous tip Tuesday night that Carter was somewhere in the 200-unit Santa Fe Gardens apartment complex at Santa Fe Avenue and Cypress Street. Block told reporters earlier that Carter was believed to live in the complex.

Deputies quickly sealed off the area, and a Special Weapons and Tactics team was brought in to join in the search.

The situation remained unresolved late Tuesday night.

Earlier in the day, Block said county supervisors had authorized a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Carter and his accomplice.

“I think the gang members are all cowards,” Block told a late-afternoon news conference. “It’s the most wanton kind of violence to fire into a house and not even know who was in there. The family was sitting there watching TV.”

Ironically, Saucedo, his wife, Maria Hernandez, 39, and half a dozen other family members were watching a show about criminal fugitives called “America’s Most Wanted” when the shots rang out about 8:20 p.m.

Twenty-two bullets were sprayed into the family’s two-bedroom stucco house, piercing walls, windows and a steel security door. One bullet traveled through three walls into the home’s back yard.

Irma, a bubbly first-grader, died at the scene. Her mother was reported in stable condition Tuesday at a Long Beach hospital. Irma’s brother, Martin Saucedo, 13, received a minor stomach wound and her cousin, David Sanchez, 7, suffered a minor leg wound.

Simmering Dispute Blamed

Martin Saucedo on Monday blamed the attack on a simmering dispute over a baseball cap he owns that bears a street gang’s “colors.”

Describing himself as a baseball player and not a gang member, he said he had fought with gang members over the blue Kansas City Royals hat. The most recent confrontations had occurred Friday and Sunday.

Block said investigators feel that the shooting was gang related but “have not been able to develop any information validating” Martin’s claim. He said Carter was not one of those who had fought Martin.

However, Carter was seen in the Saucedos’ neighborhood the day of the shooting, Block said.

Block declined to disclose Carter’s alleged gang affiliation. He said the suspect is a parolee with “a lengthy criminal record for drugs and robbery.”

“The identity of the other suspect is unknown,” the sheriff said.

Block said Carter was seen in the East Compton area before the shooting carrying “an AK-47 type weapon, which it appears was one of the weapons used” in the Saucedo attack.

An AK-47 is a high-powered, Soviet-made assault rifle that has become “a weapon of choice” for some street gang members, Block said.