Five Die in Grim Hour of Gunfire

The shots broke out as Maria Arroyo walked with her 2-year-old son in their Eastside neighborhood. She ducked behind a tree, clenching him. Then she felt something warm on her arm.

“I just said, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” the 22-year-old mother recalled Wednesday, fighting back tears. “When I was holding his head, I saw the blood in my hand.”

Arroyo’s child died in her arms, the victim of a random bullet fired in a stunningly bloody autumn hour across Los Angeles County.

Within that space of time Tuesday night--about 6 to 7 p.m.--five lives were lost, several involving suspected gang members as the shooters or victims, police said.

Among those killed were two teenage sweethearts slain by a single round that pierced their bodies as they embraced on a Long Beach porch.

Police said Wednesday that no arrests had been made in any of the shootings.

Homicide rates have been dropping in Los Angeles County for several years. And a quick string of killings is more likely to occur in warmer weather, law enforcement officials say. But what happened Tuesday night was a grim reminder of how random violence can be: roughly twice as many killings in an hour as the county experiences in an average day.

On Wednesday, Maria Arroyo stood in the doorway of her modest East Los Angeles home, where she had just moved a week earlier, and tried to make sense of the loss of her son, Enrique Gallegos.

Neighbors and family described the child as a lively boy who was fond of chocolate and who often played on his tricycle.

The mother refused to judge her child’s killer.

“I didn’t see him. Only he knows what he did,” Arroyo said. “It will be in his conscience to have left a victim of what he did.”

About 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Arroyo, Enrique and three women were walking to a fast-food restaurant about two blocks from their homes.

According to investigators and witnesses, the group was caught in the cross-fire as rival gang members fired at each other from their cars.

“I heard a sound like if something was hit,” recalled Rebecca Barragan, who was with the group. “I told them that we should hide behind the trees.”

Realizing that Enrique had been hit, the women ran toward the home of neighbor Pearl Hernandez.

“When I opened the door, I saw the child lying on the [porch] with blood,” said Hernandez, who called paramedics.

Less than an hour later, Enrique was pronounced dead at County-USC Medical Center.

Wednesday, a makeshift shrine decorated with flowers, candles and photos of Enrique marked the spot where the child lay on the porch.

Death on a Front Porch

In North Long Beach, meanwhile, candles burned on another porch. That was where sweethearts Jessica Cotto and Roger Hernandez, who had been dating for six months, stood the evening before.

A single shot was fired about 6 p.m. The couple was either hugging or Hernandez was trying to shield his girlfriend when the round was fired, according to police and bystanders.

The bullet tore through Hernandez’s back and punctured his girlfriend’s chest, neighbors and relatives said.

“I thought it was a firecracker,” said Benny Wolke, who lives behind the gray stucco house where Jessica lived with her grandmother. “I came running out. There were people screaming and shouting.”

Hunched on the porch, Josephina Hernandez cradled her 15-year-old granddaughter, desperately trying to resuscitate her.

“She said, ‘Oh, my God!’ And that was the last thing she ever said,” the grandmother recalled. “I was trying to give her CPR. I was so desperate.”

Neighbors and Jessica’s brother, Robert, vainly applied rags to 17-year-old Roger in an effort to staunch the flow of blood until rescuers arrived.

“He died in my arms,” said Robert Cotto.

Although police had not determined a motive for the shooting, they said Wednesday that Hernandez or the shooter may have had gang affiliations.

Several miles away, gang violence was blamed for the deaths of two teenagers in Inglewood.

Shortly before 6 p.m., Inglewood patrol officers heard gunshots. When the officers arrived, police said, 18-year-old Odell Hoy and a 16-year-old boy whose name was not released were lying on the street.

The two youths were pronounced dead a short while later.

About three hours later, 15-year-old Hector Matta was standing with two friends when a car pulled up. A man stepped out and fired several rounds from a handgun before speeding away, police said. Matta died at a local hospital and one of his friends was wounded in the leg, police said.

According to police, Matta and the shooter were gang members.

“It can happen all of a sudden,” Lt. Fred Corral of the county coroner’s office said Wednesday as he waited to identify several of the victims from the night before. “There’s really no period when there’s more [killings] than another.”

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Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez and photographer Genaro Molina contributed to this story.