Youth Shot to Death on RTD Bus

A teen-age gunman shot a young passenger to death on a crowded Rapid Transit District bus Friday and escaped with three companions when the driver stopped, police said.

Frightened passengers pushed to the front of the bus when sounds of a scuffle and then a single shot were heard from the rear. No one else was injured, according to an RTD spokesman.

Wilshire Division police declined to immediately identify the victim or say whether the shooting was gang related, pending the questioning of more than a dozen passengers who witnessed the confrontation as the bus passed through the 4100 block of Venice Boulevard in southwest Los Angeles.

Detectives were questioning two youths Friday who were allegedly companions of the gunman. The police were directed to the teen-agers by the mother of one boy who pleaded with her son to “tell the truth” about what happened.

Los Angeles Police Detective Dan Andrews said four youths got on the bus at Crenshaw and Venice boulevards shortly after 3 p.m. and went to the back, where an argument ensued. The victim was shot once in the chest.

A 14-year-old student at Mt. Vernon Junior High School, who requested that he not be identified, said he heard several youths swearing at each other in the rear of the bus. “The one who just got on the bus kept repeating to the victim, ‘What did you say? What did you say?’ ” said the ninth grade student.

“Then they started pushing each other and wrestling,” he added.

The struggling lasted about three minutes, he said.

After the shooting, the youth with the gun and his companions bulled their way to the front of the bus “pushing everybody along the way,” and ran out the door, the witness said.

A distraught mother of one of the gunman’s companions told a Times reporter that her 14-year-old son said the shooting was an encounter between members of rival gangs.

The woman, who declined to give her name, explained that when her son and a 13-year-old nephew came home Friday afternoon they “looked odd.”

After seeing a television report of the bus shooting, she asked her son whether he knew anything about it. She said he replied, “I didn’t do it.”

“I knew right then,” she said, “that’s why he was acting so strange. . . .”

“My son and nephew and two guys from (a street gang) got on the bus,” she said. “There was a boy asleep at the back. One of the two guys wakes him up and starts messing with him.”

Before he was shot, the victim cursed and identified himself as a member of a rival gang, she said. Then he stood up and struggled with one of the her son’s companions, who pulled a gun and fired, she said.

After hearing the account, she notified police, who picked up the boys for questioning.

“When the police came to take them to the station,” the woman said, “they were scared to death. I explained to them that because they didn’t do anything, they could just tell the truth.”

She said her son “hangs with a gang” for companionship, not criminal activity. “He has some crazy notion he wants to be a gang member,” she said.

Detective Andrews declined to identify the boys as either suspects or witnesses.