Siege Mentality Hits Oakwood Neighborhood : Violence: Terrified residents seek refuge in their homes from ongoing feud between black and Latino gangs.

The Westside’s bloodiest gang war in more than a decade has left a trail of dead from Venice to Mar Vista over the past two months, turning terrified residents into virtual hostages and confounding police who have poured in to stop it.

At least 10 people have died, including a growing number of bystanders with no gang links, and more than 30 have been wounded since early October in a seesawing blood bath between black and Latino gangs that some claim bears the ugly markings of a race war.

In the compact Oakwood section of Venice, where two of the gangs normally get along, residents long accustomed to sporadic nighttime gunfire now shut themselves in after dark. One spate of killings forced teachers at a neighborhood preschool to keep youngsters inside daily for two weeks. Children as young as 3 have witnessed deadly shootings in a battle that has roots that remain unclear.

“It’s scary. . . . You can’t even walk the streets in the daytime,” said Renata Palmore, 29, a mother of three who lives on Indiana Avenue in Oakwood.

“I’ve been in tears for several weeks,” said one resident who lives near the bullet-torn hub of the neighborhood’s busy street-drug market. “There’s a big sadness, our whole neighborhood under siege. They’re hiding. Nobody goes out. (They tell) their friends not to come over.”

The violence has crept east to Mar Vista Gardens, a public housing project just outside Culver City that is the stronghold of a Latino gang known as the Culver City Boys. Besides two gang-related killings nearby, a series of racist notes appeared on apartment buildings housing black residents and two homes were firebombed last month in attacks thought to be linked to gang rivalries.

“I’ve never seen a gang war quite so intense, where we’ve had such a high number of shootings in such a short time,” said Lt. Brad Merritt, who heads the LAPD’s Westside anti-gang detail.

Even gang specialists, who saw a similar war break out in the late 1970s, are unsure what is fueling the current violence. Some trace it to the January killing of a Venice man affiliated with V-13, a Latino gang, by a black woman with ties to the Venice Shoreline Crips, a black gang. The woman was killed weeks later in a drive-by shooting. Both gangs are based in Oakwood.

No other gang killings occurred until September, when a V-13 affiliate was shot dead on the fringe of Oakwood. Two more died in Venice gunfire attacks in October. But November was the bloodiest month, with at least seven dead in alleged retaliatory gang ambushes, including two victims who had no gang ties but appeared to have been mistakenly targeted because of their race.

The wave of killing caps a particularly turbulent year in Oakwood, a half-square-mile collection of family bungalows and apartment buildings west of Lincoln Boulevard. The traditionally black neighborhood--now about half Latino--witnessed a wave of gentrification by white professionals during the 1980s.

Gang members were suspected of firebombing the homes of half a dozen anti-crime activists earlier in the year and repeatedly shooting out street lights. A Nation of Islam security patrol was fired by the private owners of 15 federally subsidized apartment buildings after authorities said it had been ineffective at stemming drug dealing and other crime there.

“I’m getting better at telling automatic weapons from handguns from shotguns,” said Deanna Cherry, who regularly hears gunfire near her home.

Explanations for the current gang crisis are as elusive as the bicycle-riding drug dealers who openly signal passing motorists. Police say the reaction to the two deaths early this year simply got out of hand. Some speculate the arrests or slayings of senior gang members have left trigger-happy young hotheads out of control. Others cite reported directives from imprisoned Mexican Mafia figures ordering street cronies not to share the street drug trade with nearby black gangs.

“It’s almost like the Middle East confrontation,” said the LAPD’s Merritt. “It just goes back and forth and no one can remember what started it all.”

Attempts at mediation reportedly have been frustrated by outbreaks of new shootings, although quiet efforts are under way to get the groups together.

Meanwhile, the conflict is claiming a growing number of victims who have nothing to do with gangs. On Wednesday, police said, a Latino man was shot and wounded by a black gunman riding a bicycle on Sunset Avenue in Oakwood.

Last Sunday, a black man with no known gang ties was shot dead in Mar Vista, riddled in the back while walking along a section of Venice Boulevard outside the area of earlier battling. Police say they are unsure of the motive, or whether his attacker, described as a Latino man of about 18 years, was a gang member.

Friends of the victim, 19-year-old Chavon Clark of Venice, fear he was a target because he was black. “Chavon was not a gang member,” said a close friend who would identify himself only as Brian. “Everybody knew he was not a gang member. The person who shot him knew he was not a gang member.”

Said Merritt: “Some of the victims are being killed because of their race, not because they’re gang members.”

Most observers play down the idea of a racial war, though.

“It is not a racial war. It is a gang war,” said Carmen Gonzales, who chairs a residents group addressing police issues in the Mar Vista Gardens neighborhood.

The violence has created an air of crisis in both communities, prompting emotional meetings among residents and even a door-to-door police survey in Venice on possible answers. The survey was shelved when new shooting broke out.

“It definitely has created a friction in the community. The fear starts to run rampant in the communities. That’s something we’re trying to deal with and face up to,” said Shirley Spearman, head of the residents council at the Mar Vista Gardens complex. “The dialogue is beginning. We have to come to a solution to our problems. The main thing is admitting the problem.”

Some activists have expressed frustration over what they consider a lack of response from city officials. “You’re not hearing any of our council people talk about it,” Gonzales said. “You’re not hearing from our leaders that this is wrong.”

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter defended her handling of the strife, saying she has repeatedly requested more police in Venice and met with school officials and gang workers in search of a solution. She said police need tips and other help from residents.

“All of us are frustrated,” Galanter said. “The people who are going to have to stop the killing are the people with the guns going around doing the shooting.”

The toll on residents has been far higher than simply the body count. Rocael Garcia, 37, a truck driver, said his children have burst into tears at the sound of a police siren ever since they witnessed a fatal shooting outside their Oakwood apartment in October. He moved his family to Inglewood shortly afterward.

“This area is too dangerous,” Garcia said Wednesday. “For some, it doesn’t matter if they kill innocent people.”

A former Oakwood resident whose stepbrother was wounded in a drive-by shooting two weeks ago has stayed away from the area. “I’m feeling a prisoner outside the neighborhood where I grew up,” she said. “I feel like I’m not safe going in there. I’m even nervous driving over to my doctor’s just outside (the area), on Lincoln.”

At the Westminster Children’s Center on the edge of the neighborhood, teachers have recently noticed a macabre fascination with guns and death among their young charges, some of whom have relatives who have died in the violence.

“What we’re seeing now is a lot of violence in their play--a lot of guns, a lot of ‘You’re dead, I’m dead,’ ” said teacher Wendy Peel. “Two weeks ago, a car drove by and backfired. All the kids stopped. All the teachers stopped. Everybody kind of looked around.”

Observers are hoping that mediation attempts eventually will stop the violence, as did a truce two years ago among rival Westside Latino gangs.

“We’re trying to bring peace to our streets,” said Gonzales, the Mar Vista activist. “We don’t want another person to die needlessly.”