Boy Wounded by Gunman; Uncle Killed by Police

A simmering neighborhood dispute over a fight between two dogs erupted in a chain of events that left a 2-year-old boy wounded by a gunman and his uncle shot dead by a Hawthorne police officer, authorities said Monday.

Hawthorne police arrested four men late Sunday night and booked them on suspicion of attempted murder in connection with the attack on the toddler.

The boy, Terrion Gibbs, was reported in fair condition Monday at County-USC Medical Center with a wounded left arm.

His uncle, James Gibbs, 31, had charged after the men in the group that allegedly wounded the toddler, waving a .357-caliber handgun. “He wasn’t thinking,” the man’s companion of 13 years, Emanda Norman, 30, said Monday. “Who was?”

Nevertheless, she said he didn’t deserve to be shot and killed by police. And she charged that he was shot in the back of the head.

“Why not shoot him in the leg? Something to bring him down,” she said, fighting back tears as she stood Monday afternoon on her porch, a few yards from the spot on the grassy frontyard where the 2-year-old had been wounded.

“Why the head? Now he’s down for forever.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating the shooting of James Gibbs, referred all questions about the case to Hawthorne police.

Hawthorne Lt. James McInerney said the officers who confronted Gibbs knew he was armed. McInerney added they also believed he had fired his gun at a house in the neighborhood in the chase that began after the 2-year-old was shot.

McInerney declined to comment on whether Hawthorne officers were aware that Gibbs was a relative of the toddler, rather than one of the men who had fired toward the boy. He also said he did not know where the fatal bullet had struck Gibbs.

Authorities declined to release the name of the 38-year-old officer who shot Gibbs. McInerney said the officer had been with the Hawthorne department since August 1994, and had previously served as a Compton reserve police officer.

“It was the wrong place at the wrong time for him to be armed,” McInerney said of Gibbs.

The gunfire Sunday began about 5:50 p.m. But emotions in the neighborhood had been high since April 18, when a Rottweiler belonging to the Gibbs family tangled with a Rottweiler belonging to one of the four suspects, Norman and police said.

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As she, James Gibbs, his brother, Terry, the toddler and two other children were enjoying the late Sunday sunshine in the frontyard of her house in the 13300 block of Cordary Avenue, shots rang out from across the street, she said.

At least three rounds hit the beige-and-brown single-story house. Inside, Norman said, were her mother, brother and three of her children. Two bullets pierced the front window.

No one inside was hurt.

“I train my kids when they hear gunshots to go to the floor,” Norman said.

In the yard, the toddler clutched his left arm and started wailing, Norman said.

She scooped him up, intending to drive him to the hospital, but flagged down Hawthorne police officers summoned to the scene by calls from neighbors, McInerney said. Police took the boy to the hospital, McInerney said.

Meanwhile, Terry Gibbs, the boy’s father, and James Gibbs began looking for the shooters.

They ran around the corner, to a house in the 3800 block of 134th Street. Believing that one of the shooters was inside, James Gibbs fired at the house, McInerney said.

Then they ran to another house about two blocks away. There, McInerney said, Hawthorne police confronted Terry and James Gibbs. Terry Gibbs stayed put, but James Gibbs fled.

In a walkway just north of an apartment building in the 13200 block of Cordary Avenue, James Gibbs was shot.

Terry Gibbs was not arrested, McInerney said.

Booked on suspicion of attempted murder were Jerry Brown, 29, of Hawthorne; David Owens, 20, of Los Angeles; Maurice Webb, 36, of Inglewood; and Harold Wash, 20, of Hawthorne.