Drive-By Shooting Wounds Boy, 2 : Gunfire: He was outside a home watching fireworks with family and friends. Bullet leaves him paralyzed and chance of full recovery is doubtful.

Two-year-old Brandon Lott was sitting on the trunk of a car wide-eyed with delight as other children twirled sparklers in front of a relative’s South-Central Los Angeles home Wednesday night when popping sounds were heard coming from a vehicle that had come to a stop nearby.

The dozen friends and relatives who had gathered at the two-story woodframe house on the 2300 block of South Gramercy Place thought the sounds were Fourth of July fireworks.

But when the boy tumbled off the car they realized that he had become the latest victim of a surge in random gunfire that is killing and maiming growing numbers of non-gang members in Los Angeles.

The toddler was paralyzed when a bullet ripped through his shoulder, injuring his spinal cord and lodging perilously close to his heart. Doctors said the boy may not regain the use of his legs.

On Thursday, Lott was listed in critical but stable condition in Cedars Sinai Medical Center’s pediatric intensive care unit.

“His chances of complete recovery are not very good,” Dr. Todd Lanman, the boy’s physician, said at a hospital press conference. “From the waist down he has trouble moving anything . . . and he has lost control of his bodily functions.”

“We were just sitting there watching fireworks when a car came by,” Dorothy Overland, the boy’s mother, said, wiping away tears. “They started shooting at the . . . babies.”

Los Angeles police investigators said that although several gangs claim territory in the immediate area and use Gramercy as a shortcut to reach the turfs of rival gangs, there was no evidence to indicate that anyone involved in the front yard Fourth of July party was affiliated with a gang.

“No gang signs were thrown or gang slogans yelled out,” said Detective Maurice Landrum of the LAPD’s Southwest division. “But we are not ruling out anything yet.”

Detective Alan Kerstein added that police have several leads and hope to make an arrest in the coming week.

Dwight Thomas, 23, a friend of the boy’s mother, was standing nearby when the shooting erupted. “You never really pay attention to these drive-by shootings until it happens to you,” he said.

“What did we do to deserve this?” he wondered aloud. “People who do these drive-bys are cowards.”

Brandon was one of at least five children who have been wounded in shooting incidents in Los Angeles during the last four days, authorities said. Police did not have details available on the other incidents.

On June 21, a random bullet killed 4-year-old Gilbert Perez Jr. in a Pomona drive-by shooting blamed on gang rivalries.

In the Fourth of July incident, witnesses said they were enjoying a barbecue and front yard fireworks display when a late-model burgundy Ford with four men inside parked in front of the house.

“I saw flashes of light, then it was ‘Pow! Pow! Pow!’ ” said neighbor Alicia Jones, 20. “At first I thought it was firecrackers, then everybody started diving for cover and running.”

“Brandon fell on the ground . . . he wasn’t breathing well . . . so we took him into the house to see what was wrong,” Jones continued. “We took off his little blue sweater and we saw the bullet hole in his right shoulder.”

Lanman said the bullet shattered a vertebra and bruised the spinal chord.

“I’m sure he’ll make some recovery,” Lanman said. “To what degree is impossible to determine.”

Although under sedation to ease his pain, the boy has been able to communicate with his mother, who spent the night at the hospital.

“He says ‘Yes,’ ‘No’ and ‘Gum’ and ‘I want to go home,’ ” a relative of the family said.