Weekend Shootings Claim 8 Lives in L.A. County

At least eight people died during the weekend in shootings in the Los Angeles area, authorities said Sunday. One was shot by sheriff’s deputies. Three were victims of drive-by shootings. One was killed by a party-crasher. One was a clerk slain in a robbery. And two were found shot under unknown circumstances.

The toll was fairly typical. On occasion it has been much higher: In one May weekend 19 died, and last August, 28 died in one weekend, including a few victims who were stabbed to death.

This weekend no stabbing deaths were reported. Seven of the dead from gunshots were males and one was a female.

The fatal shooting involving an officer took place in Walnut Park early Saturday when two deputies shot a man, as yet unidentified, who they said reached for a loaded semiautomatic pistol in his waistband after being told in Spanish and English to put his hands up.

The deputies fired nine rounds and the man was hit five times, a sheriff’s spokesman said. The man died about five hours later.

Early Sunday, a liquor store clerk, Martin Hernandez, 26, was fatally shot in the head by an assailant who had entered the store at 1298 S. La Brea Ave. Two bandits escaped the scene, police said.

Thomas Meyers, 25, attending a house party in Canoga Park, was killed late Saturday night, allegedly by a 17-year-old boy who was part of a group of young people Meyers was trying to prevent from crashing the party. The boy, whose name was not released, was booked on murder charges.

The body of Santiago Claros, 35, was found early Sunday in a parked vehicle in Florence. A sheriff’s spokesman said he had been shot several times in the upper body. Authorities ask that anyone knowing anything about the incident contact them.

Eddie Andrada, 16, of Los Angeles, a passenger in a car waiting at a stoplight in Carson, was slain Friday night by someone who pulled alongside and fired at him, a sheriff’s spokesman said. No one has been arrested.

In Montecito Heights, the body of an unidentified man who had been shot in the head was found early Saturday, police said. There were no suspects.

Two unrelated drive-by shootings in southeast Los Angeles took the lives of unidentified victims, a man Friday night and a 30-year-old woman early Saturday.

In addition, several other people were critically wounded from shootings, including the owner of a market in Willowbrook, a teen-age boy in Hyde Park and three people in Sun Valley, law enforcement officials said.