Gunfire Gives TV Film Crew Live Coverage of L.A. Gangs

A Utah television news crew was looking for visuals and sound bites about the streets of Los Angeles. What they came away with was something far better--their own harrowing tale of being pinned down with police by gang gunfire.

“I’ve been in some dangerous situations covering mudslides and helicopter crashes,” Salt Lake City reporter Sheila Hamilton said in telephone interview from her hotel room Saturday morning. “But never where I’ve felt so vulnerable. I’ve never been through anything like that.”

The too-close-for-comfort view of Los Angeles street crime occurred Friday night near 25th and Wall streets in a gang-plagued area south of downtown. Hamilton, 29, and her cameraman, 36-year-old Dennis Kurumada, were riding along with LAPD Sgt. Paul Hernandez, a gang detail supervisor, when Hernandez stopped to question two gang members about an earlier drive-by shooting.

As Hernandez and two other officers were investigating, a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed passed Hernandez’s head, hitting a wall, police said. “The shot was about two feet above my head,” Hernandez said.

Kurumada, who was filming a few feet away, dove behind a squad car--and kept filming. Hamilton was yanked by officers from the rear seat of the squad car, as the group crouched for cover.

“Everybody was yelling,” Kurumada said. “The scary part was we couldn’t determine what the line of fire was. We were in a vulnerable situation.”

The reporters, officers and two gang members remained pinned down for 20 minutes, until backup officers and a police helicopter arrived to search the area, Hamilton and Kurumada said. No additional shots were fired and no arrests were made, police said.

But it was more than enough for the Salt Lake City reporters, capping an eye-opening night probing the underside of Los Angeles street crime. Among other things, they had visited: doped-up crack cocaine users in a notorious drug-dealing alley; a drive-by shooting scene where a 13-year-old girl was wounded; a housing project where mothers told of sons killed in the relentless violence; and, a group of suspected juvenile gang members--some just 12 years old--who were stopped driving a stolen car.

One gang-detail patrol car carrying the news crew received three drive-by shootings calls, Hamilton said. That’s more than in recent memory in Salt Lake City, she said, even with police estimates that hundreds of Los Angeles gang members are moving there to expand their drug market.

Ironically, the visiting news crew was more prepared for the sniper attack than most local reporters would have been. Kurumada--”I don’t like to take chances”--was wearing a heavy, bullet-proof jacket that he borrowed from the Salt Lake County sheriff. Hamilton had on a bulletproof vest that a female officer had lent her.

Before heading home, the reporters described some of the impressions they gleaned from their visit.

Kurumada said he was amazed at the enormity of the gang and drug problem and the apparent “desensitization” to danger he observed among some people.

One scene was particularly etched into his memory. Only minutes after the sniper shot, he recalled, with police shouting for passers-by to take cover or leave the area, many people began moving about normally. One man protested to officers that they were delaying him from getting into his house, near where the sniper shot had hit the wall, Kurumada said.

But the cameraman was elated with the dramatic film footage he got for his ABC network affiliate, station KTVX.

“It’s better than going back and saying we kind of rode around with these guys and nothing really happened,” he said. “It justified the trip.”

With Los Angeles-spawned gang problems on the rise in Salt Lake City, Hamilton said she will tell viewers that “if our city doesn’t do something now, while the problem is new, this is what we’ll be dealing with. It gave me a much better perspective.”

At Los Angeles police headquarters Saturday morning, the sniper attack was not even a blip on overnight crime reports.

“That doesn’t even make (Police Chief Daryl Gates’) log” of activity, huffed Detective Stan Secosky. “When you break it down, it’s one shot that hits a wall. It’s nothing. We have policemen shot at everyday.”

Besides, Secosky said, “it was a busy night.”

Throughout the county, one suspected robber was killed in a street shoot-out with police in downtown Los Angeles and several people were wounded in gang-related shootings.

Police said the suspected robber, 28-year-old Jose Rodriquez, was shot by officers after they were flagged down by a robbery and shooting victim on 5th Street in the Central Business District. Officers spotted the suspect and chased him, opening fire when he pointed a gun at them.