San Fernando Girl, 14, Wounded in Drive-By Shooting Near School : Violence: The mother says her child came to the junior high thinking it would be a refuge from gangs.

A 14-year-old San Fernando girl was wounded Thursday in a gang-related drive-by shooting in Sylmar Park just after leaving a junior high school across the street--a school her mother transferred her to as a refuge from gang violence.

In the second such shooting near a San Fernando Valley junior high school in less than a month, Erika Martinez was hit in the groin by random gunfire into a crowd of schoolchildren at Polk Street and Borden Avenue, Los Angeles police said.

Erika was shot about 3 p.m., just after classes ended for the day at both Olive Vista Junior High School and Sylmar High School, which both border Sylmar Park.

“She’s going to be OK,” said Gari Reed, nursing supervisor at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. “The bullet went right through her, but it didn’t damage any organs.”

Erika was expected to remain in the hospital overnight, Reed said.

In the previous shooting, 14-year-old Alejandro Penaloza was killed outside Millikan Junior High School in Sherman Oaks as he was leaving the campus on May 21.

Erika’s mother, Lorraine Martinez of San Fernando, said she transferred her daughter to Olive Vista last fall because she feared the gang activity at Erika’s previous school, San Fernando Junior High.

Now she will send her to yet another school, the distraught mother said as she waited to see her daughter at the hospital.

“She isn’t going back to school there. I don’t want my child living in fear.”

Martinez said she was home getting ready to pick up her daughter when she heard about the shooting from a neighbor.

“I usually don’t pick up until about 3:15 because it’s so crowded there when all the schools let out,” she said.

“I wish I’d come earlier. I wish I had let her stay home from school today--she’s been sick--maybe then this would never have happened.”

Erika was not a gang member nor did she associate with any gang members, according to her mother, her classmates and Olive Vista Principal Charles Baldwin.

Erika had not been in trouble at the school, Baldwin said.

Baldwin said that there is very little gang activity at Olive Vista.

“Mostly we just have ‘wanna-bes--kids who try to dress like gang members and be cool,” he said.

“We don’t get hard-core types here.”

Most of the gang activity is focused on Sylmar Park just across the street, Baldwin said.

Police had no motive for the shooting.

“I don’t think they were shooting specifically at her. They just drove by and shot into a crowd, and she was hit,” Lt. Richard Meraz said. “It was definitely a gang-type shooting.”

No suspects were arrested, Meraz said.

Witnesses said the assailants were four or five boys, about 16 to 18 years old, who were in a 1975 to 1980 gray or green Chevrolet.

One boy hung out of the driver’s side of the vehicle, made a hand signal associated with a Pacoima gang and then began firing a pistol at a group of girls that included Martinez, said Alex, 13, an eighth-grader at Olive Vista who was standing nearby when the shooting occurred.

“I don’t know why they shot her. She was just standing there doing nothing,” said Alex, who asked that his last name not be made public.