Just Another Monday--After Weekend of Death

It was business as usual at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office Monday.

Investigators juggled unfinished cases from the weekend with new calls from across the county. Suicides. Homicides. Fatal accidents. All told, about one death every 20 minutes.

In Long Beach, Police Detective Ron Pavek was trying to piece together an apparent gang-related shooting that left a 14-year-old boy dead outside a Taco Bell restaurant. Terrell Wright was shot and killed after he and two friends were ambushed by gang members hiding behind a dumpster, Pavek said.

In South-Central Los Angeles, Jorge Nunez was struggling to pull his life together after his brother was shot and killed before his eyes.

The brothers were waiting at a traffic light on their way home Saturday from a friend’s house when two gunmen forced their way into their car, killed Nunez’s brother and sped away.

“These streets are very dangerous,” Nunez said.

By all accounts, it was a bloody and violent weekend in the Los Angeles area, with at least 17 people dying from bullet and knife wounds and several others being run down by motorists.

While authorities described the mayhem as apalling, they said this particular Monday was no different than most mornings-after.

“We are playing in the same ballpark every weekend,” coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said. “It is definitely a shame. It is terrible to see this kind of carnage occurring in this county.”

Dambacher said the coroner’s office handled 21 homicide cases on Saturday and Sunday, and an additional four on Friday, which the office generally includes in its weekend statistics.

By comparison, he said, there were 21 cases during the weekend of March 10 and 20 cases the weekend of March 3.

Nine of the 17 shootings and stabbings over the weekend occurred in communities patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department, which Deputy Patrick Hunter said led to an “unusually active” weekend for officers. But he said the department has no real point of reference, since it does not compile homicide statistics by weekend.

Asked if he considered nine fatal incidents a lot, Hunter replied: “It is a subjective term.”

In the city of Los Angeles, the weekend bloodshed amounted to somewhat of a lull in the normal killing routine.

Police Cmdr. William Booth said the five homicides recorded during the 60 hours from sunset Friday to sunrise Monday fell below the city’s daily average of 2.39. He said slayings in the city have hovered around that average for the last 14 months.

“It is a little bit less than the average per day, but it is terrible,” Booth said. “That is nothing to be proud about for anyone.”

Unlike many weekends, law enforcement officials said, the killings this last weekend were not all tied to gang violence.

Two Mexican immigrants were gunned down early Sunday morning during an argument with a roommate in their converted garage apartment in Norwalk.

A 23-year-old Lancaster man, discovered by a passing pedestrian, was stabbed to death next to his car.

An elderly man from Phoenix, Ariz., was slain outside his brother’s liquor store in South Los Angeles.

In the San Gabriel Valley, a Temple City man was killed after he shot and seriously wounded his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend, police said. Robert Wong, 42, was in serious but stable condition after gunning down Guo Ruey Han, 39, who had come to Wong’s suburban Rosemead home with a semiautomatic pistol, police said. The girlfriend, Jennifer Yu, 43, was not hurt, police said.

Two men were also killed in separate brawls outside bars.

In the City of Industry, a 26-year-old Alhambra man was shot several times in the chest with a rifle after he and another man were asked to leave the Fantasia night club because they were fighting, police said. Two men who fled the scene in a gray Buick were being sought.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, 25-year-old Julio Salido was shot and killed outside the Omaha bar after being ejected by the bartender for arguing with another man.