Man Kills 3 in Execution-Style Shootings : Violence: Police wound alleged assailant after four people are shot in the head at an all-night tire store in South-Central Los Angeles.

A man shot four people in the head execution-style at an all-night tire store in South-Central Los Angeles early Saturday morning, killing three before police critically wounded the alleged assailant in a shootout, officers said.

Piecing together details of the 3:30 a.m. triple homicide took all day and homicide investigators said they were not sure of a motive or whether any assailants escaped.

Southeast Division officers who were patrolling the neighborhood heard gunfire from the store’s fenced yard. Peering through a hole in the fence, they saw two men lying on the ground being shot in the head by a man, said Lt. William Hall, who conducts officer-involved shooting investigations for the Los Angeles Police Department.

The suspect fled through the gate when he saw the officers and a shootout erupted when he failed to drop his weapon, Hall said.

“We don’t know at this point what was transpiring in there,” Hall said.

Officer Brad Wise, 27, a four-year veteran, shot the man several times with his 9-millimeter pistol, Hall said. Police found a .45-caliber pistol, believed to have been used by the suspect.

A 45-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman died at the scene of gunshot wounds to the head. Another man, 34, died of a bullet wound to the head at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. A fourth victim, 29, was in very serious condition, also with a bullet wound to the head. The 26-year-old suspect was in critical condition with multiple wounds.

Police did not identify any of the people involved but family members who gathered at the scene identified two of the slaying victims as Jesse Bingham, 29, who worked at the tire shop, and his girlfriend, Sandra Green, 26. A third victim was identified by the coroner’s office as Eural Johnson, 43.

Neighbors of Williams Tire Service, at Century Boulevard and San Pedro Street, said it was not unusual to hear late-night gunfire in the parking lot. But they said the intense outbreak of shooting Saturday was alarming nonetheless.

“We . . . ran outside and saw some guy letting (shooting) off,” said a teen-age girl who lives across the street. “The police shot back at him. I heard ‘em say: ‘Freeze.’ Then I heard: ‘Bang, bang, bang.’ ”

In other incidents:

Two teen-agers were shot to death about 1 a.m. on South Center Street in San Pedro in what police described as a gang attack. One victim tried to escape in a car after being hit but he died a block away.

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a man Saturday in a confrontation after a pursuit in Lancaster, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

The deputy, whose identity was not released, arrived at the scene of a traffic accident near the Eastside Park at 5th Street East and Ivyton Street, where a man involved in the crash was attempting to flee, Deputy Benita Hinojos said. The deputy caught the man on the 500 block of East Kettering Street, where the deputy fatally shot the man, whose identity was not released, Hinojos said.

Sheriff’s deputies also reported the discovery of two bodies in two communities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

A man’s body was found by hikers in a vacant lot at Palos Verdes South and Cherry Hill Avenue in Rancho Palos Verdes. The body of another man, also discovered by hikers, was found at the foot of a cliff in the 2900 block of Paseo del Mar, Palos Verdes Estates.