1 Slain, 9 Hurt in Rampage by Fresno Teens

Teen-agers suspected of belonging to street gangs rampaged through this Central California city on Sunday night and Monday morning, killing one person and wounding at least nine others in a four-hour spree of seemingly random shootings across several neighborhoods.

Fresno police officers, though no strangers to gang violence as their once-rural city steadily grows more urban, nonetheless appeared startled by the uncommonly violent outburst.

“There doesn’t seem to be any identifiable pattern,” Police Sgt. Mike Guthrie said. “I think it was more driving until they saw an opportunity and taking it.”

Most victims were walking down the sidewalk when they were shot.

The violence ended about 1:30 a.m. Monday when officers arrested four juveniles ages 14, 15, 16 and 17 and confiscated five guns. One suspect remained at large. Guthrie said there was no indication the youths were high on drugs, but crack cocaine was seized from one suspect.

Guthrie called the assaults “unprecedented in our city. I can recall nothing of this magnitude. . . . There very easily could have been half a dozen or more murder victims.”

Besides those who were wounded and the one who was killed, bullets were fired at seven people, who were not hit, police said.

The juveniles in custody officially were being held in connection with eight incidents in which the one person was killed and six wounded. Three other people were shot in two other incidents, but investigators were uncertain if the same assailants were involved.

Ironically, the rampage began because uniformed officers were conducting anti-gang activities Sunday evening in a drug-infested sector of west Fresno called “the U,” police said.

Five juveniles had intended to commit a drive-by shooting of members of a rival gang but left because of the police presence, Guthrie said.

They committed their first assault at 9:33 p.m. and the killing only moments later several blocks away, Guthrie said.

One juvenile then left the group, and the other four continued robbing and assaulting people north seven or eight miles almost to Fresno State University, then back toward downtown, he added.

“This entire scenario was an afterthought,” Guthrie said, noting that young gang members usually stick to shooting other youth gang members.

“But in this case, we have gang members branching out in the community to attack non-gang members, and that’s highly unusual.”

With a population of 350,000 and growing, Fresno long ago outlived its long-held image as a sleepy agrarian outpost in the middle of the vast San Joaquin Valley. Its population boom, fueled in large part by new arrivals from Southern California, has unsettled some longtime residents.