LOCAL : 5 Shot, 2 Killed, in Westlake
Two men were shot and killed and three others were wounded, including a 16-year-old pregnant girl shot in the stomach, all within the same Westlake neighborhood on the first night of the Thanksgiving holiday, authorities said.
Three of the shootings were linked to an ongoing territorial war between an established Latino gang and a newly formed, but unusually reckless, gang made up mostly of first-generation Salvadoran youths, said Los Angeles Police Detective Andy Cicoria.
The shootings began at 4:45 p.m. Thursday when a 26-year-old woman “walking on the sidewalk and minding her own business caught a stray bullet in the neck,” said Detective Terry Wessel. The woman was paralyzed from the neck down but was listed in stable condition Friday at County-USC Medical Center.
At 9:30 p.m. the 16-year-old girl was shot in the stomach and left knee in a drive-by incident, Wessel said. The girl was hospitalized in critical condition, but the condition of her 4-month-old fetus was not immediately known.
Another man died a block and a half away in a gang-related shooting about 6 a.m. today, Wessel said.
In an incident apparently unrelated to the gang war, another man was shot to death late Thursday in a drug-related incident at the intersection of 6th Street and Westlake Boulevard, Wessel said.
“They were dropping like flies around here,” Wessel said.
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