Gang Shooting Kills Girl, 17

Two teenage girls were shot, one fatally, as they stood talking to friends and relatives in front of a graffiti-splashed apartment building on West 15th Street, police said Wednesday.

A lone gunman walked up to the five people about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, exchanged words with one of two men and then fired at him, hitting the girls instead of his intended target, investigators said.

“It appears to be a gang territory dispute,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Jim Miller of the Wilshire Division.

Ingrid Zuniga, 17, died at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center shortly after the attack, according to the county coroner’s office. Police declined to identify the other victim, also 17, who was hospitalized overnight with a shoulder wound and released Wednesday.

Police believe that the gunman is a gang member who thought that his target belonged to a rival gang. Whether that is the case is “unknown at this point,” Miller said.

Zuniga was staying with friends in the neighborhood, known as Country Club Park, but lived elsewhere in the city, officers said.

The other girl lives with her mother and three siblings in an apartment building on 15th Street. She returned home Wednesday but declined to speak to reporters.

A cousin of the wounded girl said she and her family were “afraid because the person who did this lives around here.”

She was running into a building when a bullet struck her in the shoulder, her cousin said. In an account slightly different from the police version, the girl told him that the shooter rode by on a bicycle and flashed a gun. When Zuniga’s brother-in-law, who was standing with her, looked up, the bicyclist opened fire, he said.

No one in the sidewalk group was connected to a gang, he said.

A number of gangs are active in the neighborhood. On Wednesday afternoon, city crews were busy erasing graffiti from walls, including those of the apartment building that was the backdrop to the shooting.

Although Miller estimated that between 10 and 20 gang killings have occurred in the Wilshire Division this year, he said the overall number of homicides, including those that are gang-related, has dropped about 40% compared to last year.