Officials Identify Boy, 11, Shot in Family’s Minivan

Authorities on Sunday identified an 11-year-old boy who was fatally shot in the head as he rode in his family’s minivan as Paul Youhanian of Valencia.

Los Angeles police had no suspects in the boy’s slaying, which occurred Saturday evening on Sherman Way, just east of Whitsett Avenue near the Hollywood Freeway. At the time of the attack, Paul was riding in the backseat of a blue minivan being driven by his mother.

A spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said the shooting, which shattered a passenger window on the minivan, did not appear to be related to the mysterious wave of window-shattering freeway attacks, which have numbered more than 200 since Sept. 11.

Silvia and Teresa Hernandez, who were sitting in front of their apartment on Whitsett when the boy was shot, said they didn’t hear any shots.

“We just heard a lady screaming so hard so we rushed over,” Silvia Hernandez said. “The lady said she saw something go through a backseat window and that she heard a noise, but that she didn’t know what it was.

“When she looked in the backseat, she said she saw her little boy bleeding. He was slumped over.”

Hernandez said she did her best to stop the bleeding. “I was holding both sides of his head,” Hernandez said. “He was moving around. He was bleeding so badly.”

As Hernandez tried to save the boy, her 15-year-old daughter, Teresa, helped his younger brother out of the minivan as the boys’ mother screamed and cried. The 3-year-old, who was also riding in the backseat, was not injured.

Paramedics rushed Paul to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, where he died shortly before 10 p.m.

It remained unclear Sunday whether the attack was a random drive-by shooting or whether the family was the intended target. What was clear was the devastating toll that the shooting had taken not only on the boy’s family but also on residents of this bustling neighborhood, where car accidents are common but not killings.

Hernandez openly wept Sunday morning as she recounted the previous night’s events. She and her family bought flowers and created a makeshift memorial at the scene of the shooting for the boy they had never known.

“I hope that the police get the people who did this,” Hernandez said. “They have to pay for what they did. If you could have seen that little boy. . . . “