Suspects Arrested in Drive-By Slaying of 3 : Crime: Police won’t say how many are held in Compton case. The victims were friends who were going to skating rink.

Several suspects were in custody Sunday in connection with a weekend drive-by shooting in Compton that left three young friends dead in the city’s latest outburst of gang violence, authorities said.

Angela Southall, 16, was in her driveway with two friends about 8 p.m. Saturday, getting ready for their regular jaunt to a local roller-skating rink, when a barrage of bullets was fired from a passing car, said her father, Darrel Southall.

“They weren’t out here [in the driveway] five minutes before all hell broke loose,” Southall said Sunday, as friends and relatives mourned the Fairfax High School junior at her home.

“I heard a loud bang bang bang bang. When we ran out here,” the father said, his voice trailing off, “my daughter was lying on her stomach. She said, ‘Daddy, I got blood in my mouth.’ She just went . . . on me.”

Killed were Southall and her two friends, Keane Flanell Faulkner, 20, and Ronice Alisha Williams, 17, police said. The two teen-age girls and the young man were treated by paramedics at the scene of the shooting in the 1000 block of South Dwight Street but later died at area hospitals, police said.

Darrel Southall, a 44-year-old medical records clerk in Long Beach, said his daughter had been shot three times in the chest while Williams was shot once in the head. Southall said he did not know the extent of Faulkner’s wounds.

The trio used to go roller-skating together every Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, he said.

Compton Police Department officials would not divulge many details of the Saturday night shooting, citing “the delicate nature of this ongoing investigation.” Not even the names and number of people arrested were released.

But Southall said he was told by Compton police that gang members involved in the drive-by attack may have been cruising the area because they wanted to retaliate for the shooting of a young girl earlier that day on their own turf.

Sgt. John Garrett, the Compton police watch commander Sunday, said he could not comment on the retaliation theory or on whether there had been another shooting earlier in the day. “We are still investigating. That’s all we want out,” he said.

While the father did not see the attackers, he said an eyewitness was able to give police a description of a vehicle.

Within minutes of the shooting, Lt. Danny Sneed said, police had found the vehicle nearby. That led officers to several suspects, including the alleged shooter, who were arrested within a few hours, he said.

Police did confirm that the shooting appeared to be linked to gang activity. The department expects to release more information on the case once its investigation is completed by Tuesday; other “possible suspects” are still being sought, authorities said.

The bloodshed comes at a time of high concern about violence in Compton, where the 1995 murder toll was 74 as of last week. There were 84 murders last year.

Local NAACP leaders have called for a stronger response to the violence, saying that law enforcement officials don’t seem to be doing enough to combat the problem. But Compton police have rejected calls for the department to form a community liaison committee on the issue, saying the public needs to help bring killers to justice.