2-Year-Old Is First to Fall in Gang Rampage : Violence: Shots hit girl whose mother was talking to a friend. Four more were killed over two days in Inglewood.

When a loud rumbling woke him up, Inglewood resident Yarbrough Morrow assumed it was an earthquake. Moments later, when he saw his daughter and 2-year-old granddaughter stumble bleeding through the front door, Morrow realized that the sound had come from a far deadlier Los Angeles phenomenon: gunfire in the streets.

“I woke up yelling, ‘Get the baby! Get the baby!’ because I thought it was an earthquake,” Morrow, 47, said Friday. “Then my daughter came in the house yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, I’ve been shot!’ Then the baby fell down on the floor, and she was bleeding. Lord, I wish it had been an earthquake. How could anybody ever want to hurt that little girl?”

Morrow’s granddaughter, Kyiara Nicole Morrow-Jackson, died after she was hit in the chest by one of more than a dozen shots fired by three men, believed to be gang members, who drove up in front of the Morrows’ home on West 78th Street while her mother, Gina Morrow, 23, was outside talking with a friend.

Police said the men apparently mistook the friend for a rival gang member because he was wearing a red shirt. Gina Morrow was wounded in the hip in the shooting.

They were the opening casualties in an orgy of gang violence that swept this city of 112,000 on Wednesday and Thursday nights, which Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent called “two of the most violent nights in this city’s history.”

Five people were killed, including 14-year-old Tila Lashay French, who police said was chased down by two suspected gang members on North Eucalyptus Avenue and riddled with bullets. Six people were wounded.

Most of the victims were bystanders with no gang connections, leading Inglewood Police Chief Oliver Thompson to suggest at a news conference Friday that it would be appropriate for Inglewood residents to remain in their homes after dark so they do not get caught up in gang cross-fire. Vincent said he will ask the Inglewood City Council to set up a $15,000 reward for information on the shootings. No suspects have been arrested.

Yarbrough Morrow and his wife Betty, 44, who have lived on their quiet, tree-lined block for two decades, said that gang violence was never a problem for them--until their only granddaughter was killed.

“In 20 years, we never had any trouble here,” Betty Morrow said Friday. “There’s no graffiti, no fights, nothing. I don’t know why it happened. I just don’t know.”

“I had never seen them before,” Gina Morrow said Friday. “I was just standing there talking with my friend, and they pulled up in a gray Cadillac and got out and said: ‘What’s up, cuz?’ to my friend. Then they started shooting. I grabbed my daughter and started running, and I knew I’d gotten hit. My leg was numb, but I thought it was just me. Then when I got inside I opened up her jacket and I saw the gunshot wound, and I was saying, ‘Hold on, Kyiara, hold on, hold on.’ And she said, ‘Mama’ to me, ‘Mama, Mama,’ and then she was just fading away, fading away.”

Kyiara died at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. Police said neither Gina Morrow nor her friend has gang connections.

A steady stream of well-wishers visited the Morrow home Friday, some of them relatives, some friends, some strangers who were moved and angered by the Morrows’ tragedy. One was Cynthia Taylor, who said her 3-year-old grandson was killed when a stray bullet hit him two years ago at the Nickerson Gardens housing project.

Like several others, Taylor noted how much money is now being spent helping earthquake victims. Although she said she understands the need for such assistance, Taylor added: “They ought to take a little of that money and use it to stop the crime. Parents are suffering. Little children are suffering. It’s got to stop.”