Gang Suspect Arrested in Drive-By Shooting

Los Angeles Unified School District police arrested a reputed gang member and were searching for two others in the drive-by shooting Thursday of a 16-year-old boy outside a Lomita junior high school.

Inglewood police, however, said they have no suspects in an unrelated drive-by shooting near Inglewood High School earlier that day.

Arrested Thursday in connection with the shooting of ninth-grader Adam Mendoza at Fleming Junior High School was a teen-ager who is reputed to be a member of the Eastside Torrance gang.

The suspect, whose name and age were not available because he is a juvenile, was being held at the Lomita Sheriff’s Station. Police said they are looking for two other teen-agers who are also members of that gang.

Authorities said that Mendoza was on campus at about 1:30 p.m. when he flashed the gang hand signs of the Harbor City Peewees at a black Camaro that was driving by the campus on 254th Street. Passengers in the car fired at least five shots at Mendoza, said Wesley Mitchell, chief of the school district’s police force.

Relatives said Friday, however, that Mendoza is not a gang member and did not display gang signs. Mendoza was to be released from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center this weekend, said his brother, Jose, 19.

The older Mendoza said doctors left a bullet in Adam’s neck because it would have been too dangerous to remove it.

Hospital officials declined to comment on the teen-ager’s condition.

Harbor City Peewees and rival Eastside Torrance, which claims turf in the Los Angeles city and county territory near Torrance, have engaged in a violent feud for many years, authorities said.

A year ago today a man was shot and killed while cruising with friends near Normandale Recreation Center on Eastside Torrance turf. Two Harbor City gang members were arrested but were not charged with the shooting because of insufficient evidence, said officials in the district attorney’s office.

In the Inglewood shooting, investigators said they suspect that Crip gang members from Los Angeles were responsible for the wounding Thursday morning of Joseph T. Hardges, 17, near Inglewood High School.

Hardges and four fellow students from nearby Hillcrest High School, an alternative school, were walking past Inglewood High at 10:45 a.m. when three or four youths in a van flashed Crip gang signs and yelled gang slogans.

One of the van’s occupants then fired a single shotgun blast that hit Hardges in the face, neck and head. Hardges was in stable condition Friday at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Sgt. Harold Moret said the four youths Hardges was walking with are members of one of the Blood gangs in Inglewood. The Bloods are traditional rivals of the Crips.

Moret said police have several leads in the case, but have no suspects.