When Learning to Walk Means Learning to Duck : Gangs: Frequent violence is having a traumatic impact on many Los Angeles County children.

The warning echoed down the block of stucco and wood-framed cottages. “Get off the streets,” someone yelled. “There’s gonna be some shootin’!”

As if on cue, a group of children scattered for cover, hidden from the silver sedan that glided past the South-Central Los Angeles home where only two days before, a 5-year-old girl was shot to death while playing hopscotch.

The youngsters stayed motionless as the strange car rolled down the road and out of sight without any shots being fired. With the danger gone, the shaken children resumed their play--indoors.

“That’s living in South-Central Los Angeles,” a young man remarked of the chaotic scene. “It happens every day.”

Such quick reflexes, which have long been a way of life for children in gang-plagued communities, are becoming increasingly necessary, according to authorities. They say that with the proliferation of gangs, more and more children are being killed or maimed by bullets intended for gang rivals.

As Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Wes McBride put it: “It is tough for kids out there.”

The death of 5-year-old Ashley Johnson was only the latest of several highly publicized shootings involving children this year. Among the others were Brandon Lott, 2, who was paralyzed by a bullet July 4 as he watched playmates twirl sparklers, and 6-year-old Daniel Rodriguez of Pomona, who was critically wounded in February when gang members missed their target.

In a run-down Pomona neighborhood known as “Sin Town,” where a 12-year-old boy was wounded two weeks ago, several gang members offered their perspective on the escalating violence against children.

“Their mamas know we are gangbanging, selling dope and robbing--they should keep them inside,” one of them said, turning his attention to a 10-year-old boy listening intently from atop a nearby wall.

“If that kid there on the wall gets shot in the head, they’ll blame it on us,” the gang member said.

“If he gets hit, he gets hit,” said another. “It ain’t my . . . brother.”

“He’s got nothing to live for anyway,” concluded a third.

From the time children in gang territories are old enough to walk they are taught by their parents to run from such seemingly benign sights as an unfamiliar vehicle or someone wearing the reds and blues of possible gang affiliation.

They are told to stay off the streets and, when outside, to play behind walls for protection from errant bullets. In some particularly bad neighborhoods, children know what days of the week their local parks are controlled by gang members and to stay away.

For many youngsters it has become almost second nature to say they are from “nowhere” when asked where they live so that they cannot be identified with any gang’s turf.

They learn early to recognize--and react to--the resonant pop of gunfire.

“I hide on the floor,” said Quiana Williams, 6, who lives a few houses from where Ashley was killed. “I get up when the shooting goes away.”

“The kids around here all know to hide when shooting starts,” said Quiana’s mother, Deborah. “They learned by listening to the sounds of the night--gunshots, police sirens, paramedics.”

On a recent day in East Los Angeles, 17 third-graders were asked by a visitor how many of them had witnessed gunfights on their neighborhood streets. More than half raised their hands, including an 8-year-old who remembered running into his house when the shooting started.

“We turned off the lights and laid down on the floor,” he said. “I didn’t like it.”

Educators in Los Angeles County’s roughest areas say that such traumatic and frequent episodes of violence are making children afraid to go outside, compounding the problem of truancy.

“We had a drive-by shooting near here last month--one guy was shot in the neck, another in the groin--that was witnessed by 17 of our students,” said Evelyn Y. Wilson, a counselor at City Terrace Elementary School, east of downtown Los Angeles. “They couldn’t sleep and their parents had to walk them to school every day. But some stopped coming.”

To encourage the children’s return, Wilson said, she has been giving awards for the most improved attendance. Still, some have yet to come back.

At Utah Street Elementary School on the Eastside, coordinator Judy Charlton said teachers have learned to keep an eye on the sky. “When we see police helicopters hovering nearby,” she said, “we bring the kids inside and lock the doors.”

Gangs, Charlton said, have made the little lessons of life hard for children to enjoy.

Recently, she said, 20 plants that the students had painstakingly nurtured to bloom--as a project to learn to care for living things--were ripped out by gang members who congregate in the schoolyard on weekends.

“Somehow,” Charlton said, “we’ll have to explain to the children what happened to their garden project.”

Educators and psychologists say that living amid such violence can have a profound impact on how children view the world and their place in it, carrying the potential for later problems in life.

Psychiatrist William Arroyo, acting director of the Los Angeles County/USC child-adolescent psychiatric clinic, said these children “develop a different sense of what life is all about.”

“They see it as something that can be taken away suddenly, and they view this as a matter of fate, which helps them cope,” he said. “By and large, many are going to be more guarded in their daily behavior than kids from communities that aren’t rampant in violence.”

Mental health experts also worry that children will turn to gangs to protect them from violence, something that their parents cannot always do.

M.C. Cook, 60, a local father figure, put it like this the other day as he taught some youngsters to play marbles:

“Hatch a chicken egg and that chick will follow you around because you’re the only one it knows. Same thing on these streets: Children here need someone they can depend on, and that’s where the gangbanger and the dope man step in.

“We just heard some gunshots and they didn’t even look up,” Cook said of the children gathered around him. “It’s a shame. They hear so much of it.”

And see so much of it.

Five-year-old Kirk Martinez has seen a sister shot in the stomach and a father shot in the mouth and back in separate incidents over the past year near his home in City Terrace, one of the most violent areas of Los Angeles County.

“I try and cut the blow by telling him they were hurt in accidents,” said Kirk’s mother, Margaret Martinez, 38. “I don’t want the truth to penetrate his head.”

Ashley’s mother, who was president of the advisory council at Figueroa Elementary School in Los Angeles, also struggled to shield her daughter from the negative influences swirling around their lives. Family friends say she never let the girl out of her sight.

“She was proud of her daughter, taught her manners, even planned to present her as a debutante one day,” said Peggy Terri, a former curriculum adviser at the school. “You’d have thought that little girl was raised in Westwood.”