2 Children Critically Hurt by Gang Bullets

A 2-year-old girl and her 13-year-old brother remained in critical condition Sunday, both hooked up to respirators, after what police described as a volley of gang members’ bullets hit them outside the front gate of their South-Central Los Angeles home.

Police spokesmen said Ezekiel Smith, whose 14th birthday is next week, is believed to be a gang associate and the target of the shooting that accidentally caught his baby sister, Shantel, in the cross-fire. Both suffered three wounds, but Ezekiel is in worse condition with a gunshot to the head, said Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center nursing supervisor Ruby Fentry.

“I just don’t understand how people can do something like this,” said the children’s mother, Vanessa Smith, who was with family members at the emergency room waiting area. “I can’t see how they would hurt my babies.” The mother of six sat with her hands clasped together tightly, crying and staring at the floor.

While police attribute the incident to Ezekiel’s believed gang association, family members and neighbors proclaimed his innocence Sunday and described the Saturday night gunshots as blind volleys sent across the Hoover Street dividing line of violent rivals’ turfs.

Ezekiel was taking care of Shantel during a family get-together at the home in the 6100 block of South Hoover Street when at least two men began firing in their direction about 8 p.m., family members said. Witnesses, many of whom were part of the small gathering at the Smith home, said they heard about 30 gunshots.

LAPD spokesman Eduardo Funes said the men approached the victims from an alleyway that crosses the front porch of the small house, which also flanks Hoover Street with its east wall. He said shell casings and other evidence indicated that the shots came from a large-caliber semiautomatic rifle.

A morning after the shooting, remnants of yellow police lines and flares that blocked off the alleyway were being cleaned up by friends.

About 70 feet down the alley, dozens of bullet holes were marked by police evidence tags. Shots pierced a stucco wall, the iron fence around the Smith home and a compact car in the driveway next door.

“I saw [the gunmen] in the alley,” recalled a woman who said she stood only 20 feet from the children during the shooting. “Then I saw a gun in one of their hands. I started running for cover.” She asked to remain anonymous because she fears gang retribution.

Area residents described Hoover Street as a dividing line between rival sets of Crips and Bloods and said gang members on one side of the street often spy on those on the opposite side from the alleyway.

“I can’t believe something like this could happen to two innocent kids,” said Gregory Monroe, a family friend who lives a few blocks away and who passed the house on his way to nearby New Philadelphia Missionary Baptist Church. “All I can do now is go pray for the family.”

London Carter, a regional director for the Stop the Violence/Increase the Peace Foundation, said the organization would hold a news conference today announcing plans to move the Smith family from the house where they have lived for 13 years. The two injured children share the house with four brothers and sisters and their parents.

“They live right in the middle of a war, and this is how it happened,” Carter said.