20-Year-Old Hunted in Carson Triple Killing

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators were searching Friday for a 20-year-old man suspected of gunning down two Carson teen-agers and an adult companion after one of them allegedly broke his car window.

The shooting deaths occurred at 186th Street and Billings Avenue in a usually quiet neighborhood several blocks from the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus in Carson.

Deputies responding to reports of gunfire shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday found Angel Lopez, 16, and Johnny Ray Rivera, 18, shot to death inside a 1986 Mazda pickup idling at the intersection, said Deputy Gabe Ramirez, a sheriff’s spokesman.

The driver of the pickup, Andres Guillermo, 21, was found wounded outside the truck, Ramirez said. He died later at a hospital. All were Carson residents.

“We can’t believe it happened here,” said Nicholas Martinez, whose house is near the intersection. “We were sitting here in the living room and all of a sudden we heard gunshots.”

Investigators said they believe that the shooting resulted from an on-going dispute that intensified with the breaking of a windshield of Selman Dominguez, the Carson man whom Sgt. John Yarborough said is “our suspect.”

Shortly before the shooting, Dominguez had quarreled with one of the victims, whom he believed had broken his car windshield, said Yarborough of the sheriff’s detective bureau. Yarborough said it was not clear which victim Dominguez believed had broken the window.

Police theorize that the trio was shot as they left a visit with friends. The suspect fled in a silver or gray Nissan Maxima with a broken windshield and a spoiler on the trunk.

“It appears there was some personal dispute prior to the smashing of the window,” Yarborough said.

Dominguez, described as being 5-foot-8 and 190 pounds with short black hair, a one-inch scar on his left forearm and a “pot belly,” may be armed with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, Ramirez said. Dominguez was last seen wearing a black jacket, brown shirt and blue jeans.

“He is considered extremely dangerous,” Ramirez said.

The shooting occurred in a neighborhood of modest single-family homes, where neighbors said shootings are rare but not unprecedented.

Some recalled a man being shot almost two years ago two blocks from the location of Thursday’s shooting. “It’s not a particularly rough area, no more so than any other,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Holland of the Carson sheriff’s station.

Lopez and Guillermo were dating, and they had a 1-year-old daughter, Andrea, one of Lopez’s friends said. She said that Lopez and Guillermo had dated for about two years, and that she had last seen them a few months ago at a party.