San Diego

A 14-year-old Vietnamese boy was the first homicide victim of 1991, San Diego police said Wednesday night.

Liem Nguyen, an eighth-grade student at Horace Mann Junior High School, was shot once at close range in the head Wednesday while talking with a group of young men in the 4100 block of 49th Street in East San Diego.

Police Sgt. Fred England said police responded after several emergency 911 calls. When police arrived, he said, several youths ran from the alley and south onto Polk Avenue.

Nobody had been taken into custody Wednesday night.

San Diego narrowly missed its worst-ever year for homicides in 1990, as 159 people were killed, four short of the 1988 record of 163. Of those 159 homicides in 1990, 137 were criminal homicides--or intentional killings--down from the record of 144 two years ago.

Police said most of last year’s killings fit into a broad range of categories that included drive-by shootings, robberies and burglaries. The rest were gang-related, drug-related or the result of domestic disputes.

Many U.S. cities either set homicide records or nearly broke records. The nation as a whole had more homicides in 1990 than ever before.