7-Year-Old Shot Down in Watts : Girl Critically Wounded by Bullets Fired From Car

It was 7-year-old Kanita Haley’s turn at bat.

As the second-grader from Watts bent down to pick up a baseball bat, a car sped around a nearby corner, according to witnesses. A man pointed a gun out the passenger-side window, and the shooting began.

Other children instinctively dove to the ground Wednesday night on the stretch of dirt and grass just inside the Imperial Courts housing project. But Kanita, just five days shy of her eighth birthday, panicked and ran. A bullet tore into her right temple.

Officials at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center said Thursday that the girl was critically wounded and was being kept alive by life-support machines. Police believe she is yet another innocent victim of gang warfare and its savage toll of children and teen-agers in Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, a 14-year-old boy was shot to death as he sat on a park picnic table in an unincorporated area of the city. And a 13-year-old in an unrelated incident was wounded as he stood on a street near Fremont High School.

Wednesday morning in Juvenile Court, a 13-year-old girl was convicted of the June 2 shooting death in South-Central Los Angeles of a 14-year-old girl. Two teen-age boys were convicted of the same charge in the slaying last February of an 11-year-old who had been walking from a store in the Pico-Union area with her aunt and sister.

Last year 70 people 17 years of age or younger were the victims of homicide in Los Angeles alone. Police say most of the deaths appear to stem from animosity between warring gang factions.

In many instances, however, the intended targets go unscathed and the innocent die. And many of the innocent are young people like Kanita Haley, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In Kanita’s case, the wrong place was a fenced yard within earshot of her own home.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was traveling in a late-model beige-colored compact car with one other person, but no one had been arrested by Thursday afternoon.

The shooting occurred about 8:30 p.m. near the corner of Mona Boulevard and 115th Street, just as some Imperial Courts parents were getting ready to call their children in from the communal yard that separates the rows of two-story apartments.

Rosie Coleman, 46, a longtime resident of the project, said that the impromptu baseball game had been going strong just outside her kitchen window for some time. She had just decided to turn off her porch light and end the game when at least six shots rang out. She hit the floor.

Another woman said the shooting continued the whole time she ran from her front door to her back door to admit her son, who was frantically trying to get inside.

A 20-year-old man said Thursday that the gunman appeared to have been shooting at him and a group of friends who had been standing outside the yard.

The man, who did not want his name made public, said he turned and ran into the yard and dove to the ground. As bullets ricocheted off metal poles in the yard, he said, Kanita ran by.

Into Line of Fire

The man said he and another man tried to pull her to safety but the girl ran toward her own apartment. Her route took her into the middle of the yard and straight into the gunfire.

On Thursday, Kanita’s mother, 26-year-old Myrtle Murray, spent most of the day keeping a grim vigil at the hospital. When she returned home, she spoke only briefly to reporters.

Kanita’s 9-year-old sister, Sharrale, said that Murray brought her four children to California four years ago, but was planning to return to Indiana next month.

Kanita attended Grape Street Elementary School and brought home mostly A’s and B’s, her sister said.

As Sharrale spoke to reporters, scores of other children and their parents stood nearby. Mothers shuddered and held toddlers close to them.

“You can’t even let them play in the yard. That’s a shame,” said one parent. “You can’t even sit in a chair some nights when you’re in your own house. The shooting gets so bad, you have to sit on the floor.”

Parents Fearful

Most of the women said they will never let their children play outside at night again.

Ralph Sutton, a longtime community activist, said later, however, that people cannot hide in their homes in fear.

“There is a great need for concern about the level of the violence that is permeating our cities,” said Sutton, who works primarily with the Brotherhood Crusade, a support group for community-based agencies. “There appears to be a tolerance that stems from inertia, insensitivity or fear.”

Sutton said the only solution is for people to take to the streets and reclaim their neighborhoods. Such an action is planned this month and next in a 110-square-block area of South-Central. It is being sponsored by the Brotherhood Crusade, which has enlisted the support of churches, grass-roots community groups and scores of individuals.