How Dare They Kill a 6-Year-Old?

How dare they stand on a busy corner and shoot into traffic during the afternoon rush? How dare they take the life of a 6-year-old?

Police suspect that shots were aimed at a car containing rival gangbangers near where Melrose and Vermont avenues cross. As many as 15 bullets were sprayed into the intersection. One bullet struck a car but hurt no one. Another pierced the window of the station wagon in which Karina Gomez was riding, fatally wounding the first-grader.

The Los Angeles Police Department booked a man Wednesday on suspicion of murder, but that offers little comfort to the Gomez family, one of hundreds that lost a member to murder in 1997. These families will not take much comfort in the fact that the total of Los Angeles murders is the lowest in two decades. Nor will they take much in the gang truces that keep a fragile peace in the San Fernando Valley and Watts. Their losses cannot be replaced.

How many of us have passed through that Hollywood intersection? Driving north on Vermont toward Los Feliz, Griffith Park or the zoo? Heading west on Melrose toward the studios or shopping? And what of the hundreds of people who call the blocks around this intersection home?

“Traveling through a major thoroughfare in the middle of the day, you’d think people would be safe,” LAPD spokesman Lt. Anthony Alba said after the shooting. “There’s far too much violence in this city.” He is right. Whatever the impressive improvements in the statistics for murder and other violent crimes, there is still far too much violence in Los Angeles.

We must remember Karina Gomez and the too many other children killed by gang bullets. One minute cherished, the next dead.

How dare they?