Slaying May Be Linked to Pair’s Use of Sign Language

Police said Friday they are investigating the drive-by shooting death of a deaf woman and the serious wounding of her deaf friend in the Miracle Mile area.

Juliet Qualls, 19, was struck by a bullet in the chest as she was parking her car across the street from her boyfriend’s house Tuesday night. She was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

A passenger in her car, 19-year-old Eddie Robinson of Southwest Los Angeles, was wounded in the shooting when a bullet passed through his left cheek and shattered his jaw. Robinson was listed in serious condition Friday at Cedars-Sinai.

While a motive for the shooting has not been determined, the gunman may may have mistaken the couple’s use of sign language as the flashing of gang symbols--a common challenge among street gangs, authorities said.

The victims were not gang members and apparently had done nothing to provoke an attack, said Detective Dan Andrews of the Wilshire Division’s homicide unit.

“It has all the earmarks of a classic gang drive-by shooting,” Andrews said. “Because of the gang activity in the area, it’s not uncommon for gang members to assume that other youths in their area are affiliated with rival gangs. It’s possible the people responsible for the shooting saw these young people signaling each other, and assumed they were displaying their gang affiliation.”

Qualls and Robinson had gone to a liquor store nearby to purchase beer, and had returned to the house in the 1500 block of Carmona Avenue, where a group of deaf friends often came to socialize, according to a police report.

At Bancroft Junior High School, which has a curriculum for deaf and hearing-impaired students, Qualls had met several deaf students who remained close despite living in different parts of the city, said Deidre DeLarge, a friend of Qualls’ family.

A neighbor who said he witnessed the shooting recalled in an interview that he passed Qualls and Robinson as they walked away from the liquor store. At the time, there was no one in the area and the couple were communicating in sign language, said the neighbor, who requested anonymity.

“(Qualls) would always be walking up and down the street with her friends, all of them going on, using their hands to talk,” said the neighbor. “If you got up close, you knew they were deaf kids.”

About two minutes later, after the deaf couple drove a block and a half south on Carmona, a white Jeep Cherokee passed by, the witness said. The headlights went out and a passenger reached out of the window with a pistol. Several shots were fired into Qualls’ car, the witness said. The gunman then fired two shots in the direction of the witness, before the Jeep sped off.

“They weren’t doing anything but sticking together,” said the neighbor. “They were just deaf mutes. They talked the same way. I guess that makes them part of a gang when you’re in Los Angeles.”