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Violence Over Long Holiday Weekend Claims Dozen Lives

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Gunmen wearing ski masks handcuffed a couple on a street in Watts, left the woman behind and fatally shot the man after driving him to a remote spot in Compton, police said. It was one of at least 12 killings reported in the Los Angeles area over the holiday weekend.

The body of Billy Ray Lewis, 41, carried gang tattoos, but there was no obvious motive for the slaying, police said Monday.

Lewis was shot several times. His companion was unharmed. They were seized just after midnight Sunday.

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A 35-year old man whose name was being withheld pending family notification was fatally shot in an apparent neighbor dispute in El Sereno Christmas afternoon. After the victim was slain, three armed men barricaded themselves for two hours while the body lay on the ground between the two houses on Bohlig Road.

The three neighbors were not booked pending questioning by Hollenbeck Division detectives. Police Lt. Greg Bielman said several weapons were found in one house.

“It was just a dispute between neighbors until it flared into gunfire,” Bielman said.

Detectives had not determined what started the argument, he said.

In other incidents, Ricardo Luiz Perez, 19; Ramon Franco, 18, and Alberto Delgadillo, 19, were slain Saturday in separate arguments with rival gang members that ended in gunfire.

Perez was killed in Sun Valley, Franco in Pacoima and Delgadillo in El Sereno.

Gang rivalries were also blamed for the Sunday death of an unidentified teen-ager on West 81st Street.

No motive was immediately determined for the death of Abel Montelonto, 27, whose body was found Sunday on a sidewalk on East 22nd Street. Police said he may have been robbed.

Anna Alfaro, 22, was dragged from her apartment on Hazeltine Avenue in Van Nuys on Sunday and fatally shot in the head.

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Steven Renell Williams, a 25-year-old believed to be a gang member, was killed in a drive-by shooting Saturday on South Long Beach Avenue in Watts.

On Sunday, the unidentified body of a woman who had been shot to death was found hidden in bushes in an alley in Boyle Heights, and an unidentified body of a man was found off Placerita Canyon Road near the Antelope Valley Freeway.

The unidentified body of a 29-year-old man turned up in the back yard of a home on Imperial Highway on Monday.

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