A Cheerleader Dies : Stray bullet from gang shootout adds to the pain--and the need for action

This time it’s a cheerleader.

Like high school students almost everywhere, Sheila Lorta went off campus to eat at a fast food restaurant. On her way back to cheerleading practice, she was fatally shot when caught in gang cross fire across the street from Paramount High School.

Her grief-stricken schoolmates ask: Why her? And who will be next?

Who will be next in a city saturated with guns? Who will be next in a county filled with angry young men? Who will be next in a nation where prison has become a rite of passage for them before a return to the mean streets?

Lorta, 16, was not the first Paramount student to die near campus. An honor student, Alfred Clark, was killed near the school in June, the day before graduation. As a result, the school increased the number of security guards on campus and asked the Sheriff’s Department to beef up patrols. In response to this week’s killing, school officials have prohibited students from leaving campus to eat lunch. Such a restriction may keep them safer at school, but they still must leave campus to go home.

So what will stop the shooting? Urgently needed gun control could keep more weapons from the streets, but that won’t remove the firearms already in the hands of lawless young men. A truce among black gangs has reduced homicides in South Los Angeles. A similar truce should be forged among Latino and Asian gangs. But it’s hard to believe that any number of truces will end all gun violence.

Sheila Lorta wanted to go to college. She will not. This innocent never lived to see her dreams fulfilled. And, slowly, with every new gun death, the dream of Los Angeles is taking a hit, too.