Father of 8 Tells of Terror in Shooting at Popeye’s : Violence: Henry Hagwood was wounded in the neck during attack that claimed the life of an alleged gang member.

Henry Hagwood of Tarzana was buying takeout at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken when shots suddenly came through the glass windows of the restaurant.

“Everybody hit the floor,” said Hagwood, 47, who was struck in the neck by a bullet during Saturday night’s drive-by shooting in which one alleged gang member was killed and several customers wounded.

Hagwood, a father of eight, was speaking from his bed at the Northridge Hospital Medical Center Sunday, where he was listed in fair condition. He said he was ordering his food along with his neighbor, Brian Henderson, 34, when approximately 10 shots rang out. He turned around and saw Samuel Barrios, 16, get hit in the chest.

“I saw him flying across the room,” Hagwood said, “and then I felt a sharp pain in my neck.”

Barrios died of his wounds at Northridge Hospital Medical Center a short time later, according to Sgt. Bill Maarschalk of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division.

Henderson was grazed by a bullet and cut by flying glass. He was treated and released at the scene, police said.

Hector Lopez, 16, was shot in the buttocks. Police said he was taken to Northridge Hospital and was listed in good condition.

The shooting occurred at about 10 p.m. at the restaurant in the 18300 block of Vanowen Street. Eyewitnesses described the gunmen, who are still at large, as three male Latinos with closely shaved heads and baggy clothing. The car they were riding in was described as a mid-1980s, light-colored, four-door Toyota Corolla station wagon.

Maarschalk said the gunmen displayed gang hand signs at pedestrians in the area about 20 minutes before the shooting.

After the attack, Hagwood lay on the floor, bleeding profusely from the neck. A restaurant worker threw a towel over the counter to him.

“They didn’t want to come out from behind the counter because we didn’t know if it was over,” Hagwood said.

Hagwood got to a phone and called his wife, Gwen Flores, at home.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” said Flores. “I just kept telling myself not to get upset in front of the kids and just pray.”

Flores said her husband and Henderson had left to get a late-night meal after watching a boxing match on television.

“I just couldn’t believe it when he said they had been shot.”

The family had moved to Tarzana two years ago to get away from the crime in the North Hollywood area.

“This is not a bad part of town,” said Hagwood. “You never hear about anything bad happening out here, until now.”

“But anywhere you go, you are going to find the same thing,” Flores said. “You can’t run from it.”

Hagwood, who works days at a Bullock’s department store moving merchandise and nights as a machinist, said he and Henderson had first gone to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, but then decided that they were in the mood for the spicy chicken at Popeye’s.

“This is the kind of thing you see on TV but you never think it will happen to you,” Hagwood said. “We were just innocent bystanders.”

He added that he is currently uninsured and does not know how his family will survive without his income.

“I am too old and I ain’t got no time to mess around with [gangs],” Hagwood said from his bed. “My wife is a student, I support eight kids and I work 15 hours a day. . . . I could have died.”

Detectives are still investigating the shooting and plan to hold a news conference today.