Boy, 2, Slain as Assault Rifle Rakes Home in Compton

A 2-year-old Compton boy who was killed Saturday night by semiautomatic weapon fire was described by neighbors Sunday as a playful, “all-American kid.”

The boy, Philip Fisher, was fatally wounded in the head when one of two men in a passing car fired an assault rifle at a crowd of people. Four people were wounded in what police called a gang-related attack, including a teen-ager who was on a life-support system Sunday at a hospital.

The toddler was being held by an uncle in the front yard of his home in the 1300 block of South Central Avenue when the shooting erupted, witnesses said. He died an hour later at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

“This is what they kill 2-year-olds with,” the brother of one victim said in disgust, holding up a spent bullet he found Sunday morning in the yard where the shootings occurred.

Shooting Went On and On

The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he was in the house when the attack occurred.

The gunfire, which could be heard several blocks away, continued for so long that the brother recalled thinking to himself: “When are they going to stop shooting?”

Evidence of the previous night’s violence was clearly visible Sunday. Parked outside the modest, green stucco house was a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88--its left front end riddled with 17 bullet holes.

Although witnesses said the shots sounded as if they came from a machine gun, police believed the assailants used a semiautomatic weapon.

“It was definitely an assault rifle that was used,” said Compton Police Sgt. Danny Sneed, who declined to identify the make of the weapon. “We recovered 13 bullet casings from the scene but there may have been more shots fired.”

Sneed said the shootings occurred just after 9 p.m. Saturday as the victims stood outside the house talking.

Witnesses said a blue Buick Regal with two men inside pulled up in front of the house and opened fire through the passenger’s window.

DeAndre Richards, 19, who lived next door, was hit by two bullets, one of which traveled from his arm into his neck. Police said he was on life support at Dominguez Medical Center in Compton.

Police said the other victims included Rodney Jackson, 28, who lived at the house where the shooting occurred. He was wounded in the leg. Robert Lamle, 21, a neighbor, was shot in the knee. Jerome Hunter, 24, of Long Beach, suffered a graze wound in the buttocks.

The boy’s mother, Yolanda Jackson, 25, was inside the house at the time of the shooting and was not injured.

“The child was an all-American kid,” neighbor Carol Johnson said of the slain child. “You loved him because he always wanted to play with you. He was a godsend to Yolanda.”

Sneed said police suspect that the shootings resulted from a dispute between rival factions of the Crips, a Los Angeles street gang. But neighbors denied Sunday that the shooting victims were gang members.

The shootings came in the wake of recent efforts by Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden and a radio station to pay $300 for each AK-47 assault rifle or other semiautomatic weapon turned in by the public.

A nationwide outcry to ban the sale of assault rifles occurred after a gunman invaded an elementary schoolyard in Stockton with an AK-47 earlier this month, killing five children and wounding 30 other people, mostly children.