Not All of Fresno Shocked by Teen Gang Rampage : Violence: An area called The U has been plagued by drugs and shootings for years, residents say.

West Fresno is separated by train tracks and a busy highway from the other Fresno, the one trying its hardest to bloom into a major American city. On the west side, they share the other city’s fear after the bloody weekend rampage blamed on five teen-agers, but not the shock and surprise.

The gang members, accused of killing one man and shooting eight others, are from West Fresno and, if police are correct, had planned to inflict their carnage there. But a show of force by police in an infamous West Fresno neighborhood known as The U diverted the black-and-maroon 1974 Chevy Impala onto a more widespread program of terror.

In West Fresno, a mostly black area that looks as if it missed the 1980s boom that made Fresno one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities, gang shootings have become an almost weekly fact of life. Most of the time, it has been gang on gang. But for residents whose night sounds include gunshots, the rampage was bound to happen.

“It’s about as dangerous as anywhere you could be,” said Charlie Jones, a building contractor who lives with his wife and four children on the block where police say the drive-by shooting was planned.

Jones and others here object to the talk--prevalent Tuesday in the mostly middle-class areas of Fresno and on radio talks shows--that the incident marked the first time that gang warfare has claimed innocent victims. For three years, he says, drug deals have been conducted openly in his neighborhood and the threat of gang bullets has made him fear for the children.

“We are innocent victims too,” said Jones.

His neighborhood--The U, named for the shape formed by the area’s three short streets--is one of about 20 areas in Fresno where police have identified youth gang members. The city has about 600 members in 32 gangs, police say. But The U also has drug dealers so bold they sell openly on the street.

Erma Dell Buckley lived nearby in a $275-a-month duplex at one of the worst corners--Eunice and Florence--for five years. As more toughs began loitering outside her windows, brazenly exchanging cash for drugs, she found it hard to feel safe enough to sleep at night.

“For about a month it got real scary,” Buckley, who uses a wheelchair, said Tuesday. “You could hear gunshots all the time, hear people running. When one of the bullets hit my house I knew it was time to go.”

She escaped two weeks ago when an apartment opened up at Lula Haynes Plaza, a clean, 46-unit complex for seniors. Opened in 1983, the apartments are fronted by green lawns and surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence. The fence is not high enough to keep out gang members, but intensive patrols have kept the complex virtually free of gangs and graffiti. “No problems here,” Buckley said.

But outside the fence, on Martin Luther King Boulevard, the graffiti on the garage door of a vacant house announces the presence of several gangs, including the Los Angeles Crips. Others in the city include the Dirty White Boys and the Bulldogs, who wear the red and white colors of the Fresno State football team.

Police officials sought Tuesday to reassure West Fresno and the rest of the city that such a vicious attack is unlikely to be repeated. “This is an isolated incident,” police Chief Max Downs said Tuesday.

Police say the incident began Sunday night when the gang members--unhappy when the presence of officers interfered with their plans for a drive-by shooting--decided instead to commit robberies and mayhem.

In the Chinatown area of West Fresno they shot at three people on the street and missed. About 9:30 p.m., shotgun blasts hit two other people on the street, including Victor Diaz, who died on the way to a hospital. The attacks continued over a large section of Fresno until after 1 a.m. Labor Day.

In all, nine people were shot and seven others robbed but not hurt. Most, including two men in West Fresno who were accosted, robbed, told to drop their pants--then shot with a pistol and shotgun--were selected on the streets without a discernable pattern. A doughnut shop employee was shot in the back after he admitted the youths to the closed shop.

Two of the injured remained in serious condition.

Police said the youths are 14, 15, 16 and 17. One was on parole from the California Youth Authority. Police said the attacks were random and had no racial element. The suspects’ names will not be released unless they are charged as adults for the murder of Diaz.

A fifth suspect who split from the group after the murder of Diaz was being sought, Downs said. All six homicide detectives in the Fresno Police Department and four robbery detectives are on the case, he said.

The chief held a press conference Tuesday with Les Kimber, the city councilman for West Fresno, trying to defuse anger about the crimes.

“The truth of the matter is that a very small number of hoodlums have taken it on themselves to dominate the community,” said Kimber, the city’s only black councilman. “We’ve got to stop alibiing for them. We’ve got to isolate those folks, cut out the cancer.”

In The U, the city council has put up $30,000 to erect a barricade intended to stop the parade of drug buyers from driving onto Eugenia Street.

Part of the shock in Fresno Tuesday was over the arsenal recovered from the teen-agers. When arrested they had two 12-gauge shotguns with pistol grips, a sawed-off 20-gauge shotgun, a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle and a semi-automatic 9mm pistol. Some residents were asking how teen-agers could acquire that much firepower.

“They buy them, they trade for them, they steal them,” said Chief Downs. “If you have enough money you can buy anything--in Fresno or anywhere else.”

Besides illustrating the city’s gang problem, the incident frightened residents because it swamped the Fresno police.

Downs said the department was so overtaxed just answering calls from crime victims, it had no units to put on the street to look for the attackers. Finally, sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers joined the effort.

A Fresno homicide detective saw the Chevy drive back past one crime scene and alerted other officers. It was a CHP officer who spotted the suspects at a convenience store parking lot about 1:30 a.m., trying to fill their car radiator with water. Two were arrested in the parking lot and two others fled but were quickly arrested nearby.

On the airwaves Tuesday, Fresno radio stations were getting an earful from upset residents.

“I’m getting vibrations of vigilante groups popping up all over the place and that’s just as dangerous,” said a talk show host on KMJ-AM, who called it the worst crime he knew of in 40 years in Fresno.

One caller who said he would take revenge demanded the name of the gang involved from two police officials who were guests on the show. They refused. Another caller urged police to protect the middle-class bulk of the city and let the gangs fight it out in West Fresno. That drew an objection from Deputy Chief Ed Westminster.

“There are innocent people in West Fresno with bullets flying through their houses,” Westminster said.