Teen Run Over in Daylight Gang Attack in Reseda Lot

Business operators and customers at a busy Reseda shopping center were still stunned Friday by an unusual daylight attack on a 17-year-old boy who was chased by bat-wielding gang members through the center’s parking lot and run over twice by a car.

Los Angeles police said dozens of witnesses at the shopping center watched in horror as the boy was run down Thursday afternoon, apparently in a gang fight.

Victor Escalante, 17, of Reseda was left unconscious with massive internal injuries by the 3:15 p.m. attack in the 18300 block of Vanowen Street, police said. He was in critical condition Friday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

Escalante is an associate of a Reseda gang and the five youths in the car that ran him down are members of a rival Canoga Park gang, police said. No arrests were made.

Police said the attack, apparently motivated by an earlier dispute, was unusual because it occurred in a public place where as many as 50 bystanders saw it.

“This was in broad daylight,” Detective Rick Swanston said. “They were very blatant about it. They acted like they didn’t care who saw them.”

“It was a frightening thing,” said Dale Geffre, a nearby resident who saw the attack from a fish-and-chips restaurant.

“These guys didn’t care who they took out. They got the kid they were after but 30 seconds earlier I was standing right there and it could have been me. It’s a sad situation when you see something like this happening here--the disregard they showed,” Geffre said.

Swanston said the attack “was very fast--nobody could have stopped it,” but that one witness ran to Escalante’s side and may have saved him from being run over a third time. He would not identify the witness for fear of retaliation.

Several witnesses provided investigators with detailed descriptions of the suspects, their car and its license plate number. The car, which had been reported stolen Thursday, was found abandoned Friday morning in Canoga Park. Swanston said the information from witnesses was used to identify two suspects and police were searching for them.

The shopping center was particularly busy at the time of the attack because classes at nearby Reseda High School had just ended for the day and students had gone to the stores and fast-food restaurants.

Escalante was walking through the shopping center lot when he was sighted by members of a rival gang who were driving a blue Camaro. The car stopped and two gang members with baseball bats chased Escalante past a Lucky supermarket and to the corner of the parking lot near Vanowen Street, police said.

The car circled the lot and hit Escalante, knocking him into a parked car and then to the ground before running over him. The driver backed over Escalante, smashing into another car before speeding away, police said.

“At first I thought maybe there had been an accident,” said a woman who saw the assault. “But then he intentionally backed up. I saw the car bump up and down and I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, how could they do that?’ It was awful.”

The woman, who operates a fast-food restaurant in the shopping center, said she was aware that gang members frequent the area, but said they caused no previous problems. “It makes me want to move,” she said Friday. “I thought about it all night.”

Investigators traced the attack on Escalante to two earlier gang clashes.

On Thursday morning, gang members in two cars--including the blue Camaro--exchanged insults at a traffic signal on Parthenia Street at Lindley Avenue and smashed windows of each others’ cars.

Later, the blue Camaro was sighted by rival gang members at Reseda Park. The gang members, along with Escalante--who did not take part in the earlier street confrontation--chased the car from the park, police said. Less than an hour later, while Escalante was walking alone through the shopping center, he was attacked.