Boy, 11, in Critical Condition After Being Shot 4 Times

A South-Central Los Angeles boy was in critical condition at a hospital Sunday after an alleged gang member opened fire at a party, wounding the boy and a woman.

Jaime Aguilar, 11, underwent surgery at King-Drew Medical Center on Sunday morning for four gunshot wounds--one of them to the back of his head, the boy’s family said.

An 18-year-old woman was also shot in the arm, but she was in good condition, police said. She was not related to the boy.

Witnesses said two young men, described as between the ages of 16 and 18 and with possible gang affiliations, came to survey the outdoor party late Saturday night. Aguilar’s family and friends were gathered for a baby shower for the boy’s sister-in-law. They told the youths it was not a gang party, and the teenagers left.

Shortly after midnight, as the party-goers prepared to leave, one of the young men returned to the house, a two-story stucco building in a narrow alley near the corner of Figueroa and 81st streets. He fired six shots at a crowd of about five people assembled in the courtyard, one witness said.

“I heard a shot, but I didn’t think it was a shot,” said Luis Torres, 18, Aguilar’s half-brother, who was indoors when the shots rang. “Then I heard boom, boom, boom. . . . Someone yelled, ‘The little kid is hit, the little kid is hit.’ ”

The woman who was wounded apparently tried to protect Aguilar by pushing the boy away from the line of fire and was shot herself, witnesses said. No one at the house Sunday knew the woman’s name, but they said she had come to the party with a friend of the family. Police did not disclose her name.

The baby shower was for Torres’ wife, Angie Martinez, 20, who is 5 months pregnant with the couple’s second child.