5 Shot to Death in Inglewood Apartment : Crime: Neighbors report hearing bursts of gunfire. Police find the bodies of three men and two women.

Five people were shot to death in an Inglewood apartment Monday afternoon in what authorities said may have been the worst homicide in the city’s history.

Police said the victims--three men and two women--were found in an apartment in the 3600 block of West 109th Street about 3 p.m.

Authorities said the victims were Shane Wheeler, 23, and a 17-year-old girl, both of whom lived at the apartment; Jimmie Lee Lewis, 23; Molintha Smith, 18, and an unidentified male in his early 20s.

“All of them had been shot,” said Inglewood Police Officer Alex Perez.

He said homicide investigators were “looking at the possibility that the killings were narcotics-related.”

Neighbors reported hearing several shots from the upstairs apartment about 2:45 p.m., but they said they had heard no commotion before the shootings.

“I heard two shots,” said a resident. “I looked up and I saw a guy . . . at the window (of the apartment).

“He just stared at me, and then he closed the window. Then there were five more shots.”

The apartment where the victims were killed is one of two behind a home in a neighborhood of single-family houses near the flight path to Los Angeles International Airport.

Sammie Fortson, 62, whose apartment is a short distance from where the shootings took place, said he heard “about seven shots.”

“But I didn’t think (anything) about it, because I hear shots around here quite often,” he said. “I don’t care what the police say; this is a high-crime area.”

Fortson said he did not hear or see anything unusual before the shots. He and another neighbor said they believed that two young men lived in the apartment, but they added that one or two other adults may have moved in with them recently.

Police cordoned off the area immediately after the shootings. No suspects were in custody late Monday.