2 Men Slain as 1988 Shootings Set a Record

Two young men were killed and four people wounded as drive-by gunmen and street gangs marked the beginning of the long holiday weekend with a series of shootings, ending 1988 with record mayhem.

The weekend’s first fatal shooting occurred at 9 p.m. Friday in South Los Angeles, where Raymond Smith, 21, was shot and killed, apparently by occupants of a passing car, as he stood in the 200 block of West 84th Street, Lt. Bob Hansohn said. Nearby, 20 minutes later, Adam Lopez, 16, was shot to death from a passing car as he walked out of a liquor store at 54th and Hoover streets.

The two shootings were not believed to be related. Hansohn, of the 77th Street Division, said no suspects had been taken into custody but the shootings “would probably turn out to be” gang-related.

Three other shootings, all in an area west of downtown, were apparently retaliatory attacks involving two rival gangs, Sgt. Ray Heslop of the Rampart Division said Saturday. Those shootings left four people wounded, two of them critically.

Heslop said Edward Moran, 21, of Tujunga, was driving past a group of men gathered on a front porch on Witmer Street between 3rd and 6th streets at 11:30 p.m. Friday, when they yelled out gang slogans and fired three shots, Heslop said. Moran was hit once in the leg.

Nearby, Ramon Gomez, 24, was standing at the corner of Temple Street and Edgeware Road at 1 a.m. Saturday when two men drove past in a car and fired three shots from a small caliber revolver, Heslop said. He was wounded in the knee.

Heslop said the shooting “was apparently” by the same gang members who had fired at Moran from the sidewalk and who had gotten into a car to continue the gunplay.

A third shooting, possibly related to the first two, occurred at 2:30 a.m. near Crown Hill Street and Loma Drive when several shots were fired from an unknown source into a group of young men and women, critically wounding a man in the arm and back, and a woman in the chest and back, Heslop said.

Both victims were taken to the County-USC Medical Center. Their names were not released.

The killings in the 77th Street Division were not included in either the Sheriff’s or Police Department’s preliminary statistics, which indicated 1988 would end with record totals of gang violence.

The Police Department reported 207 gang killings in the first 10 months of the year, a 24.7% jump over the 166 in the same period of 1987.

The Sheriff’s Department, which patrols unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and contracts its services to smaller cities, reported 94 gang killings in 1988, an 18.1% increase over 1987.

Although police statistics were available only through October, the sheriff’s report, issued Friday, backed up statements by Sheriff Sherman Block that gang violence was on a dramatic rise.