Youth Dies Shielding Girls From Gunfire at Party : Violence: Officials call Rayshaun Love, 17, an ‘absolute hero’ as search starts for teen-age gunmen.

Rayshaun Love more than lived up to his name on the last day of his life, when he was shot to death trying to shield two teen-age girls from gunfire that broke out during a party early Sunday, authorities said.

Love, 17, used his body to protect a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old when another teen-age boy got upset by beer being spilled on his shoe and started shooting, said Sgt. Robert Stoneman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“He told them to stay on the ground and he would try and protect them,” Stoneman said of Love, a senior at Desert Winds High School. The shooting also left two other party-goers wounded.

“From what we’ve learned, it appears that the young man who was killed was an absolute hero,” Stoneman said. “That’s how our investigators consider him.”

Stoneman said the incident occurred just before 1 a.m. in the garage of a house on Newgrove Street, where more than 100 people, most of them teen-agers, paid $3 each to dance and drink beer.

The gunman first fired a single shot into the ceiling that sent party-goers running for cover, Stoneman said.

After that, Love grabbed the 14-year-old girl and shielded her with his body, Stoneman said. Then, as the 17-year-old girl began to stand up, Love pulled her down and shielded her too, the sergeant said. Love was struck once in the chest.

A second armed youth stood in the doorway, but investigators said he did not fire, Stoneman said. Both suspects ran from the party and fled in a waiting car, he said.

Two men, 18 and 19, were also wounded in the shooting. Both were listed in serious condition Sunday at Antelope Valley Medical Center, Stoneman said.

Deputies are searching for two teen-agers in connection with the attack, Stoneman said.

The host of the party told investigators that he hired friends to act as security guards and frisk guests as they arrived. But the guards apparently failed to block the two gunmen.

Love’s mother, Martha Jordan, said she moved her family to the Antelope Valley three years ago to escape the violence and crime that confronted her son at their old home in Los Angeles.

“I moved from the Wilshire District to get away from crime and gangbanging ‘cause my child was not a gangbanger and I was scared for his life there,” Jordan said.

Family members who gathered at Jordan’s home Sunday described Love as a high school basketball player who cared deeply about his family.

He played the last two seasons at Highland High School in Palmdale and Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, his mother said. This season, however, he stayed off the courts while searching for a job to help support the family and was helping out around the house any way he could.

“He was really outgoing, but he would baby-sit even when his friends made fun of him,” said Diann Wright, his aunt. “He liked to do it.”

Wright, who is a paraplegic and lives with Jordan, said Love would prepare breakfast, do the laundry and help in many ways.

“He was always there for me,” she said.

Love was busy looking for work to help his mother, who has been unemployed for more than a year after the local newspaper she worked for went out of business.

He planned to apply to Cal State Northridge for the fall, as the family prepared to move again, this time to Las Vegas.

“He didn’t want to come with us,” Jordan said. “He wanted to stand on his own two feet, get an education and make something good of his life.”

Love’s girlfriend, Detonya White, described him as selfless.

“He cared about himself, but he cared about others first,” she said.