Christmas Shooting Turns Cheer Into Grief

It was supposed to be an idyllic holiday outing, the merriest of nights in a neighborhood famous for its lights.

But for one Winnetka family, a Christmas evening tour of Candy Cane Lane ended in tragedy. The father, 24-year-old Francisco Javier Hernandez, was shot by an unknown gunman about 10 p.m. Saturday, in front of his wife and 2-year-old son and throngs of other horrified families, police said.

Hernandez was clinging to life Sunday at an area hospital in gravely critical condition, police said. He had been shot in the head and upper body, and authorities do not yet know a motive for the shooting.

Hernandez had been driving his family through the Woodland Hills neighborhood near Pierce College, “looking at all the lights,” said Sgt. John Mumma of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division.

But then Hernandez suddenly stopped his car near the T-intersection of Lubao Avenue and Calvert Street, which some residents describe as the center of the Candy Cane Lane tourist magnet because of the fancy decorations of a house there nicknamed “Toyland.”

Hernandez left the car, crossed the street jampacked with other vehicles, and began talking with a young man on a sidewalk where Lubao ends at Calvert, next to Calvert Street Elementary School, Mumma said.

Nearby, adults and children were seeking a closer look at Toyland’s life-size yard displays of a gleeful Santa on a motorcycle, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fred and Wilma Flintstone and the Little Mermaid.

An argument broke out between the men, and they began shoving each other, witnesses told police. The young man then shot Hernandez twice, according to neighbors.

Police said the gunman used a small-caliber, semiautomatic pistol before running away eastbound on Calvert Street with an unidentified woman, witnesses said.

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Witnesses described the gunman as a Latino in his late teens or early 20s, who wore a white shirt, dark pants and a black baseball cap.

The shooting shocked residents of this neighborhood of ranch-style homes.

“It’s just so horrible,” said one woman who lives down the street from the crime scene and who asked not to be identified. She was hosting a Christmas party and her guests were in the middle of dessert when they heard gunshots. All the guests left without finishing the food, because no one was was still in the mood to celebrate, she said.

“It’s sad for the whole neighborhood,” she said.

The shooting was all the more upsetting, neighbors said, because it happened in front of so many people, many of them children.

Susan Kassabian, who lives across from the crime scene, came out of her home after she heard shots and then police sirens.

She heard one child watching Hernandez slumped on the sidewalk ask: “Is he dead?”

After the shooting, several houses nearby turned off their light displays, because the once-festive night had turned so eerie and somber, residents said.

“It shouldn’t happen in any neighborhood,” said Alan Pollack, a retired psychiatrist who lives on the street.

On Sunday, a family left a small bouquet of red, yellow and cream-colored roses near a police chalk mark on the sidewalk where Hernandez had lain bleeding.

“We are so saddened by such a horrible tragedy,” a note left with the roses said. “We pray for your family so you may rest in peace.”

Police are asking anyone with more information about the crime to call West Valley homicide detectives at (818) 756-8546 weekdays or LAPD’s detective headquarters division at (213) 485-2504 on evenings or weekends.