Fortunately, He’s a Hero, Not a Martyr, in the Neighborhood

Two days after Halloween, in a run-down Long Beach neighborhood, a paper skeleton hangs on a front door. Down the street, two grinning jack-o-lanterns sit on a wall. There wasn’t much trick-or-treating in this area Monday night, though, because of what happened on Halloween eve.

There was a shooting. In a small apartment, several adults were holding a costume party for about 20 kids. There were no gang members at the party, but a minor miscommunication outside led to that uniquely Southern California happening--the drive-by shooting.

From a car cruising down the street, shots were fired into the apartment. A few minutes later, the same gunman, different car, drove by again and shot some more. Then he did it a third time, this time getting out of his car and walking up to the apartment to fire six shots through a back window.

The third time, a 3-year-old girl was standing in the line of fire. Mark Seay, a 21-year-old football player, jumped on the little girl to shield her and dragged her into a bedroom, to safety.

Then Seay realized he had been shot. The bullet had ripped through his right kidney, spleen and a lung but stopped short of his heart.

Thus ended the football season of Cal State Long Beach’s star wide receiver.

Wednesday morning, Seay was wheeled out of intensive care and joked with his coach about coming back for next Saturday’s game against San Jose State.

If the story of this shooting incident has a familiar ring, here’s why: Monday’s newspapers had a story that was incredibly similar. Adults and kids gathered Sunday evening for a family-type party, in Watts. . . . Drive-by shooting with no apparent motive. . . . Young man jumps on small boy to shield him from the bullets and to drag him to safety. . . . Young man, Steven Williams, gets shot in the back for his trouble.

The Watts incident had a sadder ending. The boy, a baby, really, at 15 months old, was hit despite the heroic effort of Williams and died the next day. No suspects were arrested.

In the Long Beach shooting, a 17-year-old suspect was arrested 2 hours later, cruising the streets. And the word on Seay (pronounced Say) is that chances are good he will be able to resume his football career next season, minus that right kidney.

Seay’s condition was upgraded to good Wednesday but he wasn’t seeing visitors, except for his coach and family. The school was flooded with media requests from all over the country to interview Seay, but he was still in considerable pain and under sedation.

“He’s in great spirits,” said Larry Reisbig, the Long Beach coach. “He’s shocked by what happened, but he’s a very positive kid.”

Seay was a top wide receiver at San Bernardino High School, recruited by Oregon and UNLV, among other schools. He decided to try baseball instead, and played 2 seasons in the Texas Rangers’ farm system.

Two years ago, the Long Beach football program nearly folded. It survived, but Reisbig and his staff were desperately short of capable players. An assistant coach remembered Seay and said he had heard Seay was unhappy with baseball and was considering college football.

“So we recruited him,” Reisbig says. “He started for us last year as a freshman. He had a lot to learn, but he worked hard. He has great speed, very fluid, good hands, a tremendous competitor, dives for every ball, in tremendous shape. And a great kid, very thoughtful, kind of shy.

“He’s just really starting to blossom.”

Long Beach is 1-7 this season, but Seay, 6 feet and 175 pounds, is the team’s leading receiver. The night before he got shot, he caught 6 passes for 94 yards in a game at Hawaii.

Seay has been living with his sister and brother-in-law in that small apartment in Long Beach. While the party was in progress Sunday evening, Mark was outside working on his car.

It’s almost funny, in a very sick way, how the trouble started. A teen-ager rode by on a bicycle and Seay said, “What’s happening, Blood?”

The bicyclist apparently thought Seay had mistaken him for a member of the Bloods gang, while he was actually a Crip. And gang members are nothing if not sensitive souls. The bicyclist went and got a gun and a car and some friends and came back. Three times.

Wednesday morning, the neighborhood is quiet. I’m driving down a narrow alley, professionally curious, looking for a bullet-riddled apartment. I hear a car horn honk behind me. I keep driving. More honking. I pull over. Two young black men, looking none too happy, pull up beside me.

“Looking for someone?” the driver asks.

We start talking. The two men are cousins, John and Patrick. They live on the block. They missed all the action Sunday night, but they’re very angry.

They say there has been trouble before, that it comes from down the street, from a cheap motel on Pacific Coast Highway, a gang-run drug supermarket.

“I got shot out in front of my house last February, coming out to go to work,” says John, who is in the Navy. “It’s 5:30, and I’m not too happy to be up that early, anyway. A guy walks up to me and says, ‘Yo, Cuz.’ I don’t know what he wanted. Drugs. Money. He went to grab me. I threw him down, he reached in his pocket and started shooting. One shot went through the back of my leg, the other one missed.

“I called an ambulance, but they wouldn’t come. Said they had to wait for the police. A friend drove me to the hospital and we got pulled over for speeding.”

John opens his trunk and picks up a shotgun shell.

“I got a shotgun in my house to protect my two kids,” he says.

Patrick says he has a 3-year-old nephew and he won’t let the boy play outside in the neighborhood. Patrick says a good buddy of his was blown away by gang members a year ago in a robbery outside nearby Long Beach Poly High. On several occasions, Patrick says, he has chased rock-cocaine smokers out of his yard.

Patrick also keeps a shotgun handy.

John and Patrick don’t any more understand the logic behind what happened Sunday night than you and I do. All they know is they are angry.

“I guess (the shooter or shooters) ain’t as stupid as we think,” Patrick says. “They know little kids can’t shoot back. They know their limitations.”

John pulls a packet of X-rays out of his trunk. Holding the sheets of film to the sky, he shows me pictures of three broken hands, all his, all suffered during the last year, all in fights he says he tried to avoid, against local gang members who hassled him.

He holds up an X-ray of his lower right leg. The dark spot is a fragment of bullet lodged near the bone.

Mark Seay will soon have a similar souvenir, an X-ray of a bullet near his heart.

It will be a stop-action photo of Mark Seay’s greatest catch.

“I didn’t know (Seay) but I think I’ll go visit him in the hospital,” John says.

That’s the only way he’ll see Seay. Mark’s sister and brother-in-law packed and moved out of the apartment Tuesday. The shooter, one hopes, is out of the picture now, but it very likely is like shooing one fly out of the stable. There will be others.

The neighborhood has itself one more horror story and one less football hero.