Two Wounded by Shots Fired in Busy Mall in Long Beach

Two shots fired across a Long Beach mall bustling with weekend holiday shoppers wounded a teen-ager and a woman holding her grandchild, police said Saturday.

Benjamin Blanco, 17, was out of surgery and in serious condition late Saturday night after being hit once in the abdomen at the Long Beach Plaza, said a St. Mary Medical Center spokeswoman.

Virginia Gomez, 49, was taking her young grandchild into her arms as a second bullet struck her in the right foot. She protected the baby’s fall as she toppled, said Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Bob Caldon.

It was just before 6 p.m. when hostile words swapped between two groups of apparent gang members escalated to gunfire, and shoppers dining on pizza or burgers in the mall’s second-floor food court scattered or rolled under tables, said Detective Dennis Robbins. Police suspect the shooting was a gang-motivated incident.

“All I heard was the shots, and everybody was yelling and screaming,” said Lily Cruz, 20, of Long Beach, assistant manager of Dimattea’s Pizza. “Everybody said ‘Duck,’ so I ducked.”

So did dozens of others in the restaurant, rolling under tables illuminated by old-fashioned lamps, their lampposts festively wrapped in bright paper and hung with wreaths.

Darrel Smith, 37, a stereo department salesman at Montgomery Ward’s, near the shooting site, said his department was already full of people watching football on big-screen sets when they heard the shots.

“People started running in here. They looked frightened and terrified,” and when we walked out, “I saw people grabbing their kids and running in every direction.”

Both groups ran off after the shooting, Robbins said.

“People who did the shooting ran into our store and caused a disturbance,” said Tamara Soderberg, 21, children’s merchandise manager at the J.C. Penney store, who heard the shots. “They were yelling at each other. The customers started wondering what was going on. Some customers told us that the boys doing the yelling had a gun,” she said.

As they ran through, “Other people pretty much just kept shopping. They (the boys) stopped arguing and ran out the upper-level east doors,” Soderberg said.

Police had made no arrests as of late Saturday. “The suspects are gang members,” Sgt. Scott Robertson said.

Many plaza shops were open until 9 p.m. for the holidays, but “business died down a lot” after the shooting, said Soderberg. “It was really busy earlier. In general, the mall was picking up business, attracting a lot of customers. Now, it’s probably going to go down again. Everybody is disappointed that it had to happen three days before Christmas.”

Times staff writer John Lee contributed to this article.