Boy, 1, Dies of Wounds After Being Shot in Gang Attack

A 15-month-old boy died Monday after being wounded in a gang shooting Sunday.

Dalayfayette Polk was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting on 109th Place that also left nine others wounded.

None of the victims had anything to do with gangs, Detective Rudy Lemos of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division said. The neatly kept blue and beige stucco house in Watts where the shooting occurred is not on a block known for gang activity, he added.

Its occupants’ misfortune, apparently, was that they were having a party at a time when some people with a gun were looking for someone to shoot. Neighbors said Monday that no one else was out in their yard at the time.

Birthday Party

Dalayfayette was one of several children running and playing in the yard. Inside Lisa Toliver’s house, a small group of adults had just finished celebrating her 24th birthday.

Steven Williams, 24, was among those who stepped outside around 7 p.m., preparing to go home. He paused to look at the children, sorry for a second that he had not brought his 2-year-old daughter along. Later he would thank God that he hadn’t.

“Everyone was going home with smiles on our faces,” said Williams, a security guard, “and it just all began to end in a nightmare.”

An old Cadillac slowly cruised up the street. No one paid any attention, Williams said, until the driver yelled: “What’s up, cuz?”

When Williams looked up, he saw someone else stick the barrel of a gun out the driver’s window, aimed at the house.

“I yelled, ‘Everybody duck, he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ ” Williams said. As shots were fired, he added, “I reached out for a kid and brought him down with me.”

That turned out to be Dalayfayette. “I was crawling away when I got shot,” Williams said.

Williams remembers others running in panic and that when he was shot, someone took the baby from him and ran. He crouched by a car while others ran into the house. When all was quiet, he said, someone came out and carried him inside.

Williams was shot in the back and arm and was in stable condition Monday at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The child died at the same hospital shortly after noon.

The girl’s mother, Sheila Williams, 31, of Compton, was shot in the leg. She was treated and released from the hospital but spent the day there Monday as her son battled for life.

Anthony Edmond, 2, was grazed by a bullet and was treated and released at the same hospital.

Janale Harris, 12, was shot in the lower leg. Glen Williams, 20, was shot in the hand. Both were treated and released at the medical center.

Vincent Edward Grinner, 25, and Kevin Lamont Williams, 22, were both shot in the leg. They were treated and released from Memorial Hospital in Gardena, Lemos said.

Donnell Beverly, 23, and Emma Lee Toliver, 47, suffered minor arm wounds, Lemos said.

‘A Good Block’

Williams, a Hawthorne resident who works as a guard for Federal Express, was angry and frustrated. “What kind of people would shoot up a bunch of children and a few men?” he said. “They’re probably at home bragging how they killed a kid.”

About 50% of gang shootings involve innocent victims, according to the LAPD Gang Information Section.

Neighbors on the street said 109th Place was “a good block” but pointed out that some residents had started to move away because of what they called “the gangbangers” in the vicinity. A few said they suspect that area gangs called the Front Street Crips and the Back Street Crips were involved in Sunday night’s shootings.