3 Wounded by Gunfire at Newport Pier; 1 Held : Shooting: Bystanders leap from pier or hang from it to escape. Incident is blamed on gang activity.

Three people were shot, including a man shielding his wife and toddler, and a 16-year-old gang member was arrested after a dispute among teen-agers erupted into gunfire early Sunday on Newport Pier.

Frightened onlookers jumped off the crowded circular end of the pier, climbed over the railing and hung perilously over the ocean or screamed and ran when the assailant began firing indiscriminately, said Frank Marin, a fisherman who had attempted to break up a fight among the two groups earlier.

“I was about five feet away when he started shooting,” said Marin, 25, of Ontario, a regular pier fisherman. “He didn’t care who he shot. The guy was shooting the gun everywhere. It was crazy.”

The shootings, the second outbreak of late-night, gang-related gunfire at the pier this summer, prompted Mayor Clarence J. Turner to call for both city piers to be closed at night. The proposal drew both support and opposition from council members interviewed Sunday.

Newport and Balboa piers are currently open 24 hours a day.

Two of the shooting victims, a 14-year-old from Temple City and a 15-year-old from Monterey Park, were hospitalized with gunshot wounds to their legs. The injured man, a 37-year-old Moreno Valley resident, suffered a gunshot wound to his back, said Sgt. Andy Gonis of the Newport Beach Police Department. His wife and child were not hurt.

None of the victims’ injuries was considered life-threatening, Gonis said. The identities of the arrested youth and the victims, and the names of the hospitals where victims were treated, were not released.

Witnesses said the shootings occurred shortly before 3 a.m. and touched off a panic on the pier, where perhaps 100 people were gathered despite the hour. The pier is a popular spot among late-night fishermen.

Marin said the suspect’s friends managed to calm him down and stop the shooting. They ran off, Marin said, but not before yelling something about “the dragon family. . . . He said this was all about the dragon family.”

Shortly after the shooting, police stopped a car on 22nd Street near the pier. Witnesses identified the passenger as the main suspect and he was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, Gonis said, adding that police are seeking other suspects for questioning.

Gonis said the gunman told police he belonged to a gang, but Gonis declined to identify which one. One of the shooting victims is a member of the same gang, Gonis said, and a dispute over membership in that gang may have led to the gunfire. Gonis declined to comment further on the gang affiliations of the suspect and the victim.

Police described the arrested suspect as a runaway whose last known address was in Westminster. He is named in an outstanding warrant for vehicular burglary issued by Orange County Juvenile Court, Gonis said. He was not identified because he is a juvenile.

On July 31, one man was shot and killed and another was wounded at the pier. Although a suspected gang member was arrested immediately after the shooting, he was released the next day because of lack of evidence, police have said.

Gonis described Sunday’s attack as a rarity, despite statistics showing the numbers of weapons-related offenses in Newport Beach at record levels during the last two years. The vast majority of pier visitors are peaceful, according to police.

“This is a reflection of what’s going on all around us,” Gonis said. “Newport Beach has a reputation of being a nice place to visit and many people come down here. Some of them are gang members who do wind up causing some problems.”

Mayor Turner said he will call for the city manager and police chief to “put their heads together” and come up with a report to the City Council on the possibility of closing the pier. Earlier this summer, the city changed its beach curfew from midnight to 10 p.m.

“We hope this is an isolated incident, but who knows?” Turner said. “I don’t believe we can leave the piers open and have them as a magnet for young thugs to come down here and raise hell. . . . We are probably going to have to close them at some hour of the night.”

Councilman Phil Sansone said he would support such a proposal, adding: “This may be enough to sway the council. . . . It’s too bad for the honest fisherman who can only get out there late at night. It’s too bad one element of the society has to affect another.”

Councilwoman Janice A. Debay said the council began discussing the issue of restricting pier hours about two months ago, after merchants in the area complained that late-night activities on the pier were hurting their business.

She said that the council needs to weigh the business concerns with those of people who fish off the pier at night.

“We need to take a look at what uses are going on on the pier and see if we can make it safe for those uses,” Debay said.

She said she was concerned that if the pier were closed at night, people might go to nearby jetties to fish, which “might be even worse” in terms of safety.

Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart expressed sadness over the incident, but disagreed with Turner.

“I, personally, would not want to close the pier,” said Hart, a 14-year council member. “It’s the only place in Southern California people can go and fish without a license. There has to be a way other than closing down the city to prevent violence.”

Councilman John C. Cox Jr. declined to comment on the issue. Other council members could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Police and witnesses said the shootings Sunday were the culmination of two angry confrontations between two groups of teen-agers, the first of which began about 1 a.m. Marin, who was fishing with a friend at the time, said 12 to 15 teen-agers showed up at the circular end of the pier and bumped into another group of teen-agers who were fishing peacefully with an adult, touching off an argument over either a gang tattoo or a girl.

Gonis said the confrontations stemmed from an argument between the alleged gunman and one of the victims over whether the gunman was a member of a local gang. The victim claimed to be a leader of that gang but did not know the suspect, who was wearing the gang’s tattoo, Gonis said.

One of the youths, a 15-year-old from Monterey Park, part of the group fishing on the pier, said his friends had begun talking to some girls who were friends of the gang members. That precipitated the fight, he said.

“We came here to fish and we got this trouble,” he said.

Marin said the teen-agers who arrived at the scene pulled makeshift weapons from their baggy clothes, including crowbars, wooden two-by-fours and clubs, and began yelling, pushing and shoving each other.

Eventually a fistfight broke out that Marin and his friend, Doug Reed, also of Ontario, managed to break up, Marin said. But tension lingered between the two groups, he said.

“Everyone was walking away . . . but everyone was giving each other looks,” Marin said.

Shortly before 3 a.m., three teen-agers returned, one of them brandishing what Marin believed was a 9-millimeter handgun that he pulled from his pants.

Fisherman Rick Espinoza, 28, of Santa Ana said the boy with the gun started yelling and was looking for trouble.

“He was yelling, ‘Wanna fight? Wanna fight?’ and then I heard three or four shots,” Espinoza said. “I dove into a trash can.”

After the attackers left, Marin called 911 from a nearby pay phone and Reed began administering first aid to the wounded. Reed fashioned tourniquets around the legs of the wounded teen-agers, Marin said, and he and Reed wrapped the injured man in their jackets to keep him warm until paramedics arrived.

Marin, who said he enjoys fishing at the pier once a week, described the scene as peaceful most nights.

“Stuff like this never happens,” Marin said. “Then all of a sudden you get a night like this and it ruins things for everybody.”

Gonis said the attacker and the two victims should never have been near the area at that time of night.

“These are kids who should have been home in bed,” Gonis said.