Baby Wounded in Suspected Turf War Between Gangs

A 6-month-old girl was shot and wounded during a volley of gunfire in South-Central Los Angeles that police believe was related to a weekend turf war between street gangs, authorities said Monday.

Officials at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center said a single bullet struck the leg of the baby, whose identity was not made public. Hospital surgeons said that while the damage was severe, they hoped that amputation will not be necessary.

Detective William Baird of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Street Station said the girl was wounded when suspected gang members opened fire on a parked car Sunday night in a mini-mall parking lot at Broadway and 53rd Street.

“Over the weekend, there was an ongoing war between two black gangs,” Baird said. “There were a number of shootings and other incidents that resulted from that war. We think this may be one of them.”

Police said the girl was sitting beside her mother as the woman drove into the lot and came to a stop. Seconds later, investigators said, one or more people opened fire on the car and several bullets struck it. One hit the girl in the leg. The mother was not wounded.

Though some police reports indicated that the woman and child were the innocent victims of misidentification by the gunmen, Baird said that has yet to be determined. Detectives also said that moments after the attack, a young man stepped forward and helped the injured child and her mother.

“He jumped into the car and started to drive to the hospital, but they got into a traffic accident,” Baird said.

The detective said an ambulance took the girl and her mother to the medical center.

Baird said that because of the atmosphere of violence surrounding the attack, the identities of the girl, her mother and the rescuer were being withheld. Hospital officials said the girl’s father is a paramedic with the Los Angeles Fire Department.

It was a lethal weekend in Los Angeles County, with at least 10 people slain in incidents apparently unrelated to the attack at the mini-mall, officials said.

Two men and a woman were found shot to death in a park in Santa Fe Springs and a young man and a 14-year-old girl died in a drive-by shooting in El Monte that left three others wounded. Five people were shot, one of them fatally, in another drive-by shooting in the Mid-City area.

Shootings also claimed the lives of a man in the Athens area, a man in downtown Los Angeles and a man who was fleeing a robber in El Monte. A man was beaten to death and dumped onto a street in La Puente.