3-Year-Old Hurt at Reseda Home in Drive-By Shooting : Feud: Police say the shots were intended for the child’s mother, who according to a friend had engaged in dispute with suspect.

An ongoing dispute between neighbors escalated into a drive-by shooting Thursday in which shots intended for a mother wounded her 3-year-old daughter, authorities said.

The incident began about 1:15 p.m. at the victim’s residence, Saticoy Plaza, in the 17800 block of Saticoy Street when a truck carrying three adults and two young children stopped nearby, according to a 15-year-old eyewitness who declined to be identified.

As the passengers in the cab leaned forward, the driver, identified by authorities as Juan Manolo Cienfuegos, fired four or five shots from a handgun at Eileen Cortez, 21, the child’s mother, said Lt. George Rock of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Cortez was not struck by the gunfire, but one of the shots hit her child, Vanessa Barcenas, in the left shoulder, Rock said.

Vanessa was in UCLA Medical Center in stable condition Thursday.

Two hours after the shooting, Los Angeles police arrested Cienfuegos and Christina Stevens, 21, who was identified as a passenger, at an undisclosed location in the Sunland-Tujunga area, authorities said.

The truck and gun used in the attack have not been recovered, Rock said. A witness at the scene identified Cienfuegos as the person who shot the gun, Rock said. Police are still seeking the third adult who was in the truck.

Christine Anaya, a friend who sometimes stays with Cortez, said that the firing continued as she and others tried to remove the child from the line of fire.

Stevens was recently evicted from the 16-unit building, and Anaya said that Stevens and Cortez had engaged in a long-running feud.

Vanessa was transported by ambulance to a waiting Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter at Van Nuys Airport and airlifted to UCLA Medical Center, said Brian Humphrey, a department spokesman.

She was admitted to the hospital, but her wound was not “life threatening,” said Warren Robak, a hospital spokesman.

Within an hour of the shooting, the front yard outside the apartment building was filled with children gathered around a bank of television crews at the scene.

“It’s a good thing that he is in custody and off the street if he is willing to open fire in an area where there are kids and when there are kids in the bed of his pickup truck when he does it,” Rock said of Cienfuegos.