Relatives Trying to Make Sense of the Senseless : Tragedy: A young boy with a rare blood disease clings to life after a stray bullet strikes him in the head as he runs to greet his father.

Five-year-old Adrian Benitez was living a restricted life, forbidden by doctors to run, jump or play as the children around him did.

A mysterious blood disease, at first believed to be leukemia but later diagnosed as something less serious, was turning his body into a series of large bruises. His nose bled easily if he exerted himself.

On Wednesday night, Adrian’s mother, Martha, decided that the little boy was spending too much time cooped up inside their Carson home. Hoping to help Adrian and his 2-year-old brother, Francisco, work off a little energy before bedtime, she took the boys and one of their cousins on a short stroll down Island Avenue.

Less than half a block from home, as Martha scolded Adrian for running to meet his father, a stray bullet plunged from the sky, striking the little boy in the top of his head, continuing through his brain and lodging at the base of his skull.

No one heard the shot, said Sheriff’s Department investigators, who believe someone as far as two miles away might have fired it into the air at random. So silent was the bullet that felled the little boy that his distraught family believed for nearly two hours that he had been hit by a rock.

On Thursday afternoon, as Adrian clung to life in a deep coma at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Harbor City, relatives and friends tried to make sense of the senseless.

“What’s the thrill of shooting in the air? How can people be so stupid?” said Selene Arizpe, 21, a neighbor of the Benitez family. “That’s why they have shooting ranges. That’s why there are mountains. Why do people have to unload their guns here?”

Island Avenue is a peaceful cul-de-sac street just north of Carson’s border with Wilmington. Large, comfortable houses line the street, where neighbors know one another well and close friendships are abundant.

Until shots were fired at one house several weeks ago--ironically just a few yards from where Adrian was hurt--violence had not marred the neighborhood’s peace in many years, residents said. The sound of gunfire is rare.

“This is a very nice neighborhood, very quiet,” said Javier Aguilar, 33. “This is just a tragic, tragic thing. It’s like a one-in-a-million chance. Who would have thought?”

Martha Benitez, 27, stood in front of her house Thursday afternoon, tears streaming down her face as she begged people to help detectives figure out who had fired the shot.

“He’s the light of my life,” she wailed in Spanish as she recounted what had happened. “He’s my angel.”

Investigators urged anyone who heard shots within a two-mile radius of the area between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday to call either Bob Tauson or Bill Neumann at the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, (213) 974-4341.

Benitez said she took the boys out for a walk about 8 p.m. because they had been inside all day.

After strolling four short blocks south to Lomita Boulevard, the group turned back and was nearly home when Adrian spotted his father’s car driving by as he returned home from his work as a Santa Monica parking lot manager.

Calling out “Daddy! Daddy!” Adrian began running along the sidewalk toward his house.

“I told him not to run and he stopped, but then he put his hands on his head and he said, ‘Ay, Mommy,’ and . . . his eyes rolled up in his head and he went pale,” Benitez said in Spanish.

Seeing the blood coming from her son’s head as he crumpled to the ground, Benitez said, she became hysterical, scooped him into her arms and ran home, screaming for help. Her husband, Francisco, grabbed the boy and rushed him to Kaiser, where doctors have placed him on life support.

The principal at Broad Avenue School in Wilmington, where Adrian was a kindergartner, said the boy had been in and out of the hospital repeatedly in recent months because of his blood disorder. Family members said Adrian’s illness, related to the composition of his blood, is still being diagnosed.

“He had been absent quite a bit . . . but he is a very positive child with a lot of friends and they had been writing him get-well cards in the past,” Principal Lydia Shorssaid Thursday. “Today, the boys and girls and his teacher are very distraught, but they are writing to him again, and we’re trying to look at things positively.”

Neighbors described Adrian as an affectionate child with a ready smile.

“He’s such a lovable little boy, the sweetest thing,” Selene Arizpe said. “His parents take such good care of him so nothing would ever happen to him and then this happens.

“It’s impossible to understand.”