An Ordinary L.A. Weekend: 53 People Hit by Gunfire : Violence: Much of the county has become a shooting gallery. March 13-15 was no exception.

It was an ordinary weekend in Los Angeles County.

The Lakers lost. Chances of rain gave way to partly sunny skies.

And at least 53 people were shot--more than one an hour.

Each day in Los Angeles County, dozens of people are struck by gunfire in incidents that pass with little notice outside the neighborhoods in which they occur.

Even shooting deaths have become so routine that most never make the newspapers or television, leaving much of the community oblivious to the magnitude of what is happening on the streets.

The truth, say authorities, is that much of the Los Angeles area has become a shooting gallery where the staccato of gunshots is an everyday occurrence. Given the frequency of gunfire, they say, it is remarkable that casualties last year were no higher than 7,000 people wounded and 1,554 slain, excluding suicides and accidental shootings.

“By the grace of God,” said Los Angeles Detective J.D. Furr, “we could have 5,000 killings a year in this city.”

On a randomly selected weekend--from 6 p.m. on Friday, March 13, to 6 p.m. Sunday, March 15--The Times sought to chronicle the carnage.

Nine people were shot dead--four in separate incidents within a 25-minute span.

The weekend’s fatalities included a 14-year-old boy cut down by rival gang members, a young mother shot while trying to flee an apparent street robbery and a man shot as he intervened in an argument between two suspected prostitutes.

A 10th gunshot victim, Israel Jasso, died after seven months in a coma. The 17-year-old boy had been wounded in the head during a gang-related incident in August.

Another 44 people, two of them teen-age girls, sustained nonfatal gunshot wounds during the weekend.

Secretary Zelene Hall was among those hospitalized.

Driving home from her Mid-Wilshire law office, Hall, 38, was shot in the arm, breast and abdomen after being confronted in the View Park area by two men apparently bent on stealing her silver BMW.

“You can’t fathom it unless it happens to you, but this is real,” said Hall. “There are people out there who have guns and do not have hearts. They do not care about human life.”

The weekend’s shooting toll may be higher than anyone knows. Authorities say many illegal immigrants, gang members and others may also have received minor wounds but were afraid to notify police or seek medical attention.

At least 61 others notified police after bullets narrowly missed them.

The vast majority of people known to have been wounded or killed were African-Americans or Latinos. The average age: 23. Gang members were believed to be involved in at least 30 of the 53 shootings, either as assailants or victims. Few of the crimes have been solved.

Many shootings were concentrated in the working-class neighborhoods just west of downtown Los Angeles, or in the barrios and ghettos that spread south and east. But the incidents also ranged from Palmdale to Long Beach and from Pico Rivera to the Westside.

People were shot while standing at pay phones, sitting on the front porch or watching television--even roller-skating and bicycling.

Most victims were shot after dark, when police radio frequencies begin to crackle with reports of shooting:

“ . . . shots fired . . .”

” . . . three shots heard...”

” . . . 10 shots in the vicinity of . . .”

Friday the 13th

Along a darkened block in Lincoln Heights, where all of the street lights have been shot out, a 20-year-old gang member leans into his parked car at 9:35 p.m. and is wounded in the buttocks by a gunman in a passing car. As the car races away, other suspected gang members return fire, littering the street with a dozen shell casings. By the time patrol officers arrive, someone has driven the victim to nearby Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and no one is doing any talking.

“We’d have to tear the house apart to find the guns at this point,” Sgt. Alex Gomez says as his officers attempt to question more than a dozen gang members lined up with their hands clasped behind their heads.

A middle-aged woman walks over to Gomez, identifies two of the stone-faced youths as her children, and asks the sergeant to let them go.

“Sorry, ma’am,” says Gomez, “they’re mine now.” And then he adds, softly: “They’re all gonna die, you know.”

The woman shrugs as she walks away.

It is a typical gang shooting, officers say. The witnesses and suspects are less than cooperative. The police can do little more than pick up the pieces and wait for the next one.

A few minutes later, a 16-year-old youth and 20-year-old man are walking along a street in Central Los Angeles, when they are confronted by two youths.

“Where you from?” one of the youths demands.

“Little Criminals,” they chime, declaring their gang allegiances.

“Eastside,” the youth responds, announcing his own affiliation. Then he pulls out a shotgun and begins blasting. The Little Criminals are hit in the head, upper back and legs.

They will live.

Over the next 25 minutes, four other people will die:

10:25 p.m., 6400 block of Broadway: Deena Marie Ford, 22, steps from a friend’s apartment, on her way to a dance club, when she is confronted by three reputed gang members apparently bent on robbing her. Ford, a mother of two visiting from Riverside County, seeks refuge behind a car and is shot in the back with a .25-caliber pistol.

“She did absolutely nothing to bring this on herself,” says homicide Detective Steve Bisczo. “It’s a real shame.”

10:40 p.m., 109th Street and Watts Avenue: Gunfire erupts between gang members at a party, wounding a 13-year-old girl in the chest and arm. Another innocent bystander, dock foreman Leon Arthur Williams, 27, of Torrance, tries to escape the violence by running into a nearby field. As the father of four attempts to climb a fence, he is fatally wounded in the back and chest with a 9-millimeter pistol.

“My life is gone,” says his widow, Dolores, a hospital clerk. “Leon was a peacemaker and a Christian man. He just got caught out in the devil’s playground.”

10:45 p.m., 1700 block of West 9th Street: Vicente Barajas, 22, is standing on the sidewalk when he is shot in the neck and torso by a medium-caliber handgun, possibly fired from a passing van. There are no apparent witnesses.

More than a month after the shooting, detectives are not even sure where the unemployed Barajas was from, let alone who might have killed him or for what reason.

10:50 p.m., 8300 block of Santa Fe Avenue, Walnut Park: Jose Raul Moran, 19, steers his customized Buick into a cul-de-sac known as “The Curve” to pick up his girlfriend, who has been partying with members of the Nuthood Watts Gang.

One of them leans into Moran’s car and demands: “Where you from?” But before Moran can answer that he is a car stereo installer and no gang member, he is shot four times.

At the Cockatoo Hotel in Hawthorne, meanwhile, Juan D. Caceres, 26, is becoming increasingly drunk and belligerent, according to authorities. When he is ordered off the premises at 11:30 p.m., Caceres gets in his car and allegedly tries to run over the hotel’s armed security guard. The guard jumps aside, draws and fires.

Caceres is wounded in the chest, the evening’s last shooting victim.

The night is still young.

Saturday the 14th

Twenty minutes after midnight, muffled gunshots erupt from inside a car parked in an alley in West Los Angeles.

Wilbert L. Sampson, 31, and Lawrence Ringgold, 17, have been sitting in the car squabbling over money with Jeffrey Douglas Carter-Earl. The 19-year-old Carter-Earl allegedly pulls out a .32-caliber pistol and fires, hitting Sampson once in the neck and Ringgold once in the head.

Sampson lives. Ringgold dies. Carter-Earl will be arrested the next day and later charged with murder and assault.

An hour after the shooting, neighborhood resident Monica Mott, 25, stands outside in fuzzy pink slippers, her hand clasped over her mouth in horror, while a detective peeks under a white sheet covering Ringgold’s face.

“Anybody,” Mott says, “can be a victim of this ridiculousness.”

Meanwhile, in Long Beach, a drowsy Virginia Vigil, 34, is getting out of bed to turn off “The Twilight Zone” on her television when she hears four gunshots. The sound of shooting is familiar to Vigil--she hears gunfire almost every night in her gang-torn neighborhood--but these rounds sound extremely close.

She hits the floor instinctively, then feels a “wetness in my arm.” Vigil is bleeding, hit by .38-caliber slugs that have shattered her bedroom window and ripped into her right arm and knee.

“A couple more inches,” Vigil says later from her hospital bed, “and it could’ve been my heart.”

Her 18-year-old son is a gang member, she said, and the bullets probably were intended for him.

“My son, he wishes it would’ve been him instead of me,” Vigil says. “I told him (that) maybe this was meant for him to get out of this (gang) crap.”

For nearly two hours before dawn, there are no more reports of casualties anywhere in Los Angeles County.

But at 5:35 a.m., while out jogging with his dogs in Pico Rivera, electrician Jorge Zamora spots a man lying motionless astride a bicycle at the intersection of Mines and Cord avenues. An open folding knife is clutched in the man’s lifeless hand.

Zamora runs home and calls the Sheriff’s Department.

The dead man, Faustino Vergara, 20, has been shot twice in the back. Nearby residents report having been awakened by gunfire about 3 a.m., but say they did not think to call authorities at the time.

“It’s becoming so normal that you hear gunshots in the night,” Zamora frets. “People don’t even pay attention anymore.”

Deputies have no immediate suspects in the case.

With daylight comes a slight respite from gunfire.

Between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday, a mere three people are wounded.

After the sun sets, the gunfire begins anew.

Aircraft maintenance worker Darius Powe, 29, is driving through South Los Angeles in his red Chevy Beretta at about 8:30 p.m., on his way to visit his sister, when he brakes to let pedestrians cross 108th Street.

Suddenly, a slug crashes through the rear passenger window, missing Powe by a couple of feet. Another bullet blows out Powe’s taillights and apparently pierces a fuel line. The shooter disappears.

“I can’t believe this,” Powe fumes as he surveys the damage five minutes after the attack. “I was just driving down the . . . street.”

He is lucky. Before midnight, 18 other people will be shot, including a Lawndale man wounded in the thigh as he lunges for a robber’s gun and a Bellflower man shot in the hand while leaving a grocery store.

A 17-year-old gang member is wounded in the chest as he walks out of a McDonald’s restaurant and exchanges words with another youth who has just left a Burger King across the street.

“It’s just not smart,” Detective Lt. Ben Gering says of the incident. “You should just eat the cheeseburger and shut up.”

Shortly before 11 p.m., three suspected gang members are apparently ambushed at a bus stop in Highland Park by someone who sprays at least nine shots from a semiautomatic rifle.

Paramedics at a fire station less than a block away hear the gunfire and respond. They find Andres Molano, 14, fatally wounded, shot twice in the head and once in the right arm. Another 14-year-old boy is hit in the leg while a 22-year-old man is shot in the foot.

The area is cordoned off with yellow police tape. When detectives arrive a few hours later, they find little evidence beyond spent shell casings. The survivors, both believed to be gang members, will say nothing, and no other witnesses come forward.

“A lot of these gang members are no longer cooperating with the police,” says Detective Jose Carillo. “They want to take matters into their own hands.”

Sunday the 15th

At 10 minutes past midnight, a wedding celebration is in full swing on South Graham Avenue in Watts when a gunman in a blue sedan fires six shots into a crowd of revelers. A 25-year-old woman falls, shot in the buttocks.

Paramedics, police and sheriff’s deputies arrive in a flurry. Standing around are several teen-agers wearing Los Angeles Raiders caps, jackets and other black-colored garb favored by some gangs.

“All your guns are inside, right?” a deputy nervously asks one of them. The youth nods.

The officers depart hurriedly as soon as the victim is loaded aboard an ambulance.

Afterward, some residents complain that paramedics took half an hour to get there and that authorities asked few questions about the shooting before leaving.

“You know what they count us as? Another statistic,” Dolores A. Medina says bitterly. “They’re scared to come in here. If it was a white boy in Glendale that got shot, it’d be a different story. But we’re just a bunch of Mexicans and niggers as far as they’re concerned.”

Before breakfast time, five more people will be wounded and a suspected gang member killed in a drive-by shooting at a housing project.

At 9:45 a.m., at 53rd and Figueroa streets, two women believed by police to be prostitutes are fighting. The common-law husband of one of them, Maynor Hernandez, 23, tries to step in. Before long, fists are flying among all three people.

A passing motorist stops his van, walks over to Hernandez, shoots him once in the chest with a handgun, then climbs back in his van and drives away. Hernandez dies.

Investigators initially do not know whether the gunman was a good Samaritan coming to the aid of a woman in distress, or a pimp sticking up for one of his hookers. They will later arrest a relative of one of the women and book him in Hernandez’s slaying.

That afternoon, motorist Demitrius Hankins, 23, tries to outrace two men in another car who open fire at him at a stoplight in Southwest Los Angeles. After several blocks, the passenger in the pursuing car stands up, takes aim through the sunroof and fires a chrome-plated pistol, wounding Hankins in the right arm and shoulder.

Asked later if he can identify his assailants, Hankins tells deputies: “I’ve been knowing them for a lot of years, from the neighborhood.” He can offer no reason why his acquaintances would have shot him.

Dusk descends on Los Angeles County as doctors tend to Hankins’ wounds.

By 6:30 p.m., another person will be shot dead.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.

L.A. WEEKEND: 48 Hours of Gunfire

Between 6 p.m. Friday, March 13 and 6 p.m. Sunday, March 15, at least 53 people were shot in Los Angeles County, nine of them fatally. A 10th person, who had been in a coma since being shot last year, also died during the weekend.

Friday, March 13 1.: 9:35 p.m.-220 block of Thomas St., Lincoln Heights-A gang member, 20, leaning against his parked car is wounded in buttocks in a drive-by shooting. 2-3.: 10:10 p.m.-1000 block of S. Bixel St., Central Los Angeles-A boy, 16, and man, 20, are wounded by shotgun fire after two suspects ask their gang affiliations. 4.: 10:25 p.m.-6400 block of Broadway, South-Central Los Angeles-During at attempted street robbery, three men chase a woman, 22, around a car and shoot her fatally in the head. 5.: 10:35 p.m.-55th Street and Denker Ave., South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 23, is approached on the street by two suspects and shot in leg. 6-7.: 10:40 p.m.-109th St. and Watts Ave., Watts-A Torrance man, 27, is shot to death and a girl, 13, is critically wounded during a gang-related fight at a party. 8.: 10:45 p.m.-1700 block of W. 9th St., Central Los Angeles-A man, 22, dies in a drive-by shooting. 9.: 10:50 p.m.-8300 block of Santa Fe Ave., Walnut Park-A man, 19, is shot to death while sitting in a car. 10.: 11:30 p.m.-4300 block of Imperial Hwy., Hawthorne-A man is wounded by a hotel security guard after he allegedly attempts to run down the guard with his car. 11.: 11:30 p.m.-3000 block of Eastside Blvd., Boyle Heights-A girl, 13, is wounded in the buttocks after she and another girl are hailed by two suspected gang members in a car.

Saturday, March 14 12-13: 12:20 a.m.-An alley behind the 1900 block of S. Bedford St., West Los Angeles-A youth, 17, is killed and a man, 31, is wounded in a parked car during a dispute over money. A third man is arrested. 14.: 1:15 a.m.-15500 block of Harland Ave., Van Nuys-A suspected car thief is grazed on the head during an exchange of shots with police. 15.: 1:30 a.m.-3000 block of Baltic Ave., Long Beach-While turing off her television and getting ready for bed, a woman, 34, is wounded in the arm and knee by shots fired from outside her home. 16.: 2 a.m.-58th Street and West Blvd., Southwest Los Angeles-A man, 29, is hit in the right arm by gunfire after being ordered out of his car by three men. 17.: 2:30 a.m.-2500 block of Eastlake Ave., Lincoln Heights-A motorist, 35, is wounded in the neck by a bullet or broken glass when shots from an unknown source strike his vehicle. 18. 3:50 a.m.-400 block of Soto St., Boyle Heights-A youth, 17, is shot in the shoulder by occupants of a car next to him at a gas station. 19. 5:35 a.m.-Mines and Cord avenues, Pico Rivera-A bicyclist, 20, is found shot to death, a knife clutched in his hand. 20.: 11 a.m.-1200 block of E. 10th St., Long Beach-A liquor store clerk is wounded in the stomach by suspected gang members who steal money, food stamps and beer. Two suspects are later arrested. 21.: 1:30 p.m.-5800 block of S. Denker Ave., South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 19, is wounded in the back after a gunman orders him to run. 22.: 3:15 p.m.-92nd and Compton Ave., Watts-A gang member, 16, is wounded in the buttocks while roller-skating. 23.: 6:10 p.m.-An alley behind the 500 block of South Union Ave., Westlake-A man, 32, is wounded in the lower back. 24-25.: 7:15 p.m.-1900 block of E. 114th St., Watts-Two men, 22 and 43, are wounded in the hand and leg respectively, during a dispute over neighborhood youths throwing rocks at their car. 26.: 7:20 p.m.-5300 block of Lindsey Ave., Pico Rivera-A man, 19, is wounded in the back after a passenger in a car challenges him. 27.: 7:40 p.m.-12300 block of 226th St., Hawaiian Gardens-A youth, 17, walking to a party with two friends is wounded in the back by shots fired from a car. 28.: 8:15 p.m.-100 block of Nestor Ave., Compton-A woman, 31, is wounded in the chest while standing on a street corner. 29.: 8:30 p.m.-4000 block of Rosecrans Ave., Lawndale-A man, 26, is wounded in the thigh while scuffing with a gunman who demanded his car keys. 30.: 9 p.m.-Figueroa St. and Manchester Blvd., South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 21, is shot in the arm after three suspects pull up in a car and ask his gang affiliation. 31.: 10 p.m.-Lakewood and Artesia boulevards, Bellflower-A man, 18, is shot in the hand by a man who opens fire outside a grocery store after calling out the name of a gang. 32.: 10 p.m.-200 block of S. Washington Blvd., downtown Los Angeles-After words were exchanged, a gang member, 17, is wounded in the chest by another gang member. 33.: 10:10 p.m.-20700 block of Normandie Ave., Torrance-A girl, 17, is shot in the face outside a liquor store by the occupant of a passing vehicle, but escapes with only a bruise. 34.: 10:40 p.m.-1000 block of South St., Long Beach-A man, 43, is grazed in the head by a man who fires several times during a bar fight. 35.: 10:40 p.m.-1500 block of 151st St., Compton-A Huntington Park man, 22, is shot twice in the back while driving to a party. 36.: 10:45 p.m.-Angeles Vista and West boulevards, View Park-A woman, 38, is wounded in the chest, arm and stomach after being accosted by two men demanding her car. 37-38-39.: 10:55 p.m.-5900 block of Figueroa St., Highland Park-In an apparent ambush, a gang member, 14, is killed and two others are wounded as they stand at a bus stop. 40.: 11 p.m.-9800 block of S. Central Ave., South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 29, is hit in the kneecap during a drive-by shooting. 41.: 11:45 p.m.-Santa Monica Blvd. and St. Andrews Pl., Hollywood-A suspected gang member, 16, is hit in the pelvis and legs by shotgun fire from an unknown assailant.

Sunday, March 15 42.: 12:10 am-9200 block of S. Graham Ave., Watts-During a wedding dance, six shots are fired into the crowd, wounding a woman, 25, in the buttocks. 43.: 1 a.m.-Avenue P and 3rd Street East, Palmdale-A man, 24, tells deputies he was shot in the left shoulder by another motorist. 44.: 1:20 a.m.-400 block of S. Bixel St., downtown Los Angeles-An intoxicated man, 47, is shot outside a nightclub. 45.: 2:25 a.m.-Passons and Washington boulevards, Pico Rivera-A boy, 14, is wounded in the midsection and thigh by a youth who chases him, firing 13 times. Two suspects are arrested. 46.: 2:30 a.m.-8300 block of South San Pedro St., South-Central Los Angeles-While sitting on his porch, a man, 28, is hit in the shoulder by gunfire from a passing vehicle. 47.: 2:45 a.m.-1500 block of Navarro Ave., Pasadena-A woman, 21, is wounded in the hand after a suspected gang member fires six shots into a party. 48.: 3:30 a.m.-2800 block of Camulos Pl., Central Los Angeles-A man, 21, shot in a drive-by at a housing project and dies four hours later. 49.: 9:45 a.m.-53rd and Figueroa streets, South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 23, tries to intervene in an altercation between two women and is fatally wounded in the torso by a motorist. 50-51.:-1.10 p.m.-8100 block of S. Main St., South-Central Los Angeles-A man, 27, and a boy, 17, are both shot in the leg in a drive-by in front of a liquor store. 52.: 4:50 p.m.-Overhill Dr. and Slauson Ave., Windsor Hills-A man, 23, is wounded in the arm and and shoulder after an altercation at a stoplight with another motorist. 53.: 5:10 p.m.-Fairfax Ave. and Packard St., Mid-City-A drug dealer wounds another in the ankle during an argument over turf.

The Last Report

Every month, the bodies of dozens of people slain by gunfire end up at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. The victims--whether rich or poor, young or old, famous or nameless--undergo the same clinical procedures to determine what killed them and how.

More than 550 people have been shot to death in Los Angeles County so far this year, including nine during a 48-hour period on the weekend of March 13-15. Among that weekend’s fatalities was trucking company employee Leon Williams, a father of four who was murdered while fleeing a party where gunfire had erupted.

His body, like the others, was autopsied and his wounds were sketched on a series of standard forms. The diagram below shows that Williams sustained bullet wounds to his back, chest and left arm.