Drive-By Killing: Investigators Go by Book, Numbers : Homicide: Pregnant, 38-year-old mother becomes one of more than 800 slayings, about 300 gang-related, in city of Los Angeles this year.

The pregnant woman lay on the sidewalk Wednesday, covered in death by a bedspread given by a horrified nearby resident.

Thirty-eight-year-old Pauline Ellis was gunned down as she walked through a quiet mid-city neighborhood with her boyfriend. A month away from giving birth, Ellis had been restless late Tuesday evening. She was trying to relieve her discomfort by chewing on ice from a plastic cup as she walked along Bedford Street.

Rescuers and other authorities who rushed to the corner of Guthrie Avenue where the woman collapsed in her boyfriend’s arms handled their discomfort by going by the numbers.

The numbers:

Pauline Ellis had become one of more than 800 homicides that Los Angeles police have investigated so far this year. Police officials say so many gang-related killings--an estimated 300--have occurred that they are more than a month behind in compiling statistics; some homicide detectives are juggling more than two-dozen cases at the same time.

It was Incident No. 920 to city Fire Department firefighters and paramedics who tried to revive Ellis and save her unborn fetus before pronouncing both dead on the sidewalk.

It would become Homicide Case No. 90-0829612 to gang-crime specialists who arrived to rope off the scene with the yellow plastic tape and then began hunting for witnesses.

It would be Case No. 90-10369 to coroner’s investigators who arrived 3 1/2 hours later to remove the body. An autopsy will be performed in several days, said coroner’s officials, whose investigators handle an average of six homicides a day.

“This one would have definitely turned my stomach if I’d taken it personally,” said Detective Tanya Bowie, the first of five police investigators who were called to the scene.

Senior Detective Bernard Rogers assigned the shooting to Detectives Elliot Rada and Mark Vucinich, two newcomers to his West Bureau anti-gang unit.

The detectives tried without success to find anyone who would admit to seeing the shooting take place five minutes before midnight Tuesday.

“People are afraid to say they saw anything,” said Rogers. “One-hundred percent of the cases are like this. You get discouraged when the umpteenth witness tells you they don’t want to get involved. You have to walk away from it.”

It would fall to Rada and Vucinich to track down Ellis’ relatives Wednesday to officially inform them of her death.

The woman’s boyfriend told the pair that Ellis’ brother had happened on the shooting scene and learned of the tragedy. But they could not be sure, and it would be their responsibility to verify that a 13-year-old reported to be Ellis’ daughter was receiving adequate care.

Rada said the bullets that killed Ellis were apparently aimed at the 29-year-old boyfriend, who reportedly was “associated” with members of a local gang about five years ago. They declined to identify the man because he is a witness to the crime.

“Usually the detectives do the notifying. That’s the saddest part of all,” said Rada, 44, a 23-year LAPD veteran who has been assigned to the West Bureau Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit for just three weeks.

“You worry about notifying a mother or a grandmother that their baby or daughter was killed. You worry about them having a seizure or heart attack. Several times I’ve had to give CPR.”

But homicide detectives should never get personally involved in their cases, Rada said. “My dad was a detective and he got too involved in his cases and he developed ulcers.”

Vucinich, 29, warned his wife not to expect him home until after 9 p.m. Wednesday--about 22 hours after Ellis’ slaying. He has been a police officer for 3 1/2 years but a detective for only three weeks. Ellis’ slaying was his first drive-by shooting; he was determined the investigation would go by the book, with or without witnesses.

On Bedford Street, numbed residents were going about their business Wednesday by the numbers, too.

Before starting her day’s routine housework, Katie Foster hurried out with a bucket of bleach, a broom and a garden hose to scrub the blood off the sidewalk in front of her house where Ellis died. Other neighbors collected the bloody bedspread and the rubber gloves discarded next to the curb by rescuers.

Foster’s home is decorated with a small American flag and a yellow ribbon in honor of her brother, who is a soldier on duty in Saudi Arabia.

“I’m not surprised nobody saw it happen,” said the 19-year-old homemaker, shooing her 2-year-old son, Tommy, in from the front yard. “I doubt that anybody would be out at 12 o’clock on a Tuesday night around here.”

Neighbor B.T. Davis said he had been awakened by the gunfire and the sound of Ellis’ boyfriend screaming desperately for help.

“He was yelling, ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’ to her.

He covered her with his jacket,” said Davis, 70.

Despite the shooting, his neighborhood of 13 years has changed for the better in recent years, Davis said. Quiet returned as drug dealers who briefly took up residence in an apartment house down the street were forced out.

“When something like this happens, it doesn’t make me run,” he said. “Good always overruns bad.”

Once again, comfort in numbers.