Girl, 16, Wounded on Campus of Locke High : Violence: Two other youths are shot later near the South-Central school. Police blame gangs.

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back while taking a nutrition break on a South-Central Los Angeles high school football field Monday morning, and two boys were wounded in a drive-by shooting just outside the campus later in the day, authorities said.

The shootings were the result of an apparent flare-up between rival gangs that spilled over onto the campus of Locke High School and continued that afternoon at the nearby intersection of 109th Street and Avalon Boulevard, said Los Angeles Police Lt. George Gascon.

The girl, whose name was not released, was with a group of fellow students near the bleachers on the Locke campus about 10:30 a.m. when a gunman “either cut through or sneaked through a (chain-link) fence in the football field,” Gascon said.

“He yelled out some name--we don’t know what--and she started to run,” Gascon said. “He shot her twice, once in the back and once in the buttocks area.”

Gascon said the shootings--which occurred scarcely a week into the new school year--apparently were the result of a gang skirmish that has gone on for several days.

Authorities said the victims in the later shootings also were teen-agers but did not appear to have been students at Locke. All three victims were taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Police said the girl was listed in satisfactory condition. They had only sketchy information about the wounded boys, whose names also were not released. However, authorities said, all three appeared to be victims of the same gang clash.

“We have some information that leads us to believe (the shootings) are all related,” Gascon said, adding that the attacks were the latest in a string of shootings over the past several days.

School police had been aware of gang problems in the neighborhood but had not expected them to crop up on campus, said Assistant Chief Richard Page of the Los Angeles Unified School District police.

After the football field attack Monday morning, he said, patrols were beefed up on and around the campus, but the increased police presence failed to deter the second shooting just as school was letting out at 2:45 p.m.

Page said that since last year, the school’s two on-site district police officers have done daily spot checks for weapons by scanning students at random with hand-held metal detectors. The two officers were on campus and on duty when the shooting occurred.

But, Page added, “it’s a large campus. They can’t be everywhere at the same time.”

Moreover, he said, “there’s probably a million ways to get onto campus (with a gun).” He pointed out that the school itself does not have metal detectors at the door, and the on-campus shooting occurred near a parking lot.