The Death of a 4-Year-Old

Gilbert Perez Jr. was riding in the back seat of a car when he was hit by a bullet meant for someone else. He died at the age of 4.

He, his mother and family friends were returning from a restaurant in Pomona when the child was struck in the head by a shot fired from another car. He died Thursday, another innocent lost to mindless gang violence. Today not even the noncombatants--babies, children, teen-agers, mothers, fathers, grandparents--are spared death because of the random gunfire of Southern California’s mounting gang shoot-outs. They are the bystanders who happen to live in communities dominated by street gangs--victims of a dangerous geography in the roughest sections of South-Central Los Angeles, East Long Angeles, Pomona, Pacoima, Garden Grove and Long Beach.

They include the grandmother killed while watching television; the Boy Scout murdered while talking with friends; the little girl shot while playing softball in the yard. The innocents also include people who ordinarily only witness the violence when it is replayed on television. But even they have been killed, too, when they have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They have been shot while headed to a movie, coming from a mall, after picking up a quick hamburger or pausing to use a pay phone.

Random drive-by shootings and indiscriminate shoot-outs are killing and wounding a growing number of innocent victims, according to police. Among the recent survivors: an 18-month-old boy who was playing in his baby-sitter’s yard when he was hit in the thigh; a 3-year-old girl who was sitting on the porch when she was hit in the arm; a 7-month-old boy who was cradled in his father’s arms when he was shot in the chest.

When even babies are fair game, what is the answer? Stationing the National Guard in gang-terrorized communities? More prisons? Gun control? Better schools? More social programs? More jobs? All of the above?

We must find answers soon because the caskets, like the coffin that holds Gilbert Perez Jr., are getting smaller.