Youth, 16, Is Suspected in Man’s Shooting

In what appeared to be a gang-related attack, a 16-year-old junior high school student shot an 18-year-old man outside a Sherman Oaks junior high school Friday afternoon, police reported.

Walter Cortez, 18, of North Hollywood was struck in the neck by a bullet that lodged in his spine, said Los Angeles Police Officer Sharyn Beck.

Beck said Cortez is expected to survive. Officials at Holy Cross Medical Center, where Cortez was taken, would not release the status of his condition late Friday.

The suspected shooter, a student at Robert A. Millikan Junior High School, ran away after the attack, said Officer Manny Martinez.

The incident began at 3:11 p.m. on Weddington Street, one block north of Millikan Junior High, Beck said.

After the suspect saw his ex-girlfriend and four other people talking outside a car, he drove up in a car and exchanged words with Cortez, possibly about gang affiliations, police said.

The youth made a U-turn and drove back to the group, got out of the car and fired one shot from a .25-caliber pistol at Cortez, Beck said.

The shooting occurred in a neighborhood of neatly tended, single-family houses.

“It’s shocking to find a kid so young lying there,” said a record producer who called police after discovering the teen-ager lying in a pool of blood in the street outside his house.