6 Children Wounded in Zoo Shooting

Six children were shot and wounded, one of them critically, when gunfire erupted Monday at the National Zoo during an apparently gang-related dispute that caught visitors to the popular tourist site in the cross-fire.

Authorities said that a seventh victim suffered a seizure resulting from the violence.

Police Chief Charles Ramsey said that security officers at the 163-acre zoo were escorting some feuding youths to the exit when shots broke out. “We don’t know if it is just one person or others,” Ramsey said, when asked who was responsible for the violence.

Witnesses said that security officers tried to break up a fight that erupted in a crowd of adolescents near the seal pond and ape house.

Tony Black, who had come to the zoo with his wife and two daughters, said that one youth then “pulled out a gun and pointed it up in the air after they had been fighting for 15 or 20 minutes.”

Black said shots were fired in the air, then randomly into the crowd. People then began running for the exit, he said.

Police helicopters soon began buzzing overhead as visitors scattered.

Three of the injured children were taken to Children’s National Medical Center. An 11-year-old boy suffered a “very grave injury to the brain” and was in grave condition Monday night, said Dr. Marty Eichelberger, the hospital’s chief of trauma surgery.

A 12-year-old girl who suffered an injury of the rear pelvic area and a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the leg were in serious but stable condition, officials said.

Two other victims were taken to other area hospitals. Their conditions were not immediately available.

The zoo will be closed today, officials said.

Investigators were searching Monday night in and around the zoo for bullet fragments and shell casings. Part of Connecticut Avenue was closed as agents from the Secret Service, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms searched for evidence. One or more casings had been found, police said.

Late Monday evening, Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, said the civil rights organization is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shootings.

Founded in 1889, the zoo is believed to be the nation’s oldest and is visited by more than 3 million people a year. Situated on busy Connecticut Avenue in a well-to-do neighborhood of northwest Washington, it was teeming with families and children--many of them on spring break--when gunshots rang out at the height of the evening rush hour.

Monday’s violence stunned visitors to the zoo, many of whom brought children to enjoy the balmy spring night.

One witness, Amy Beckwith of suburban Maryland, said she was visiting the zoo with her teenage daughter and 2-year-old son when she heard screaming near the seal pond and saw a crowd of people running toward her.

“We thought it was an escaped animal,” she said.

Beckwith said she had earlier seen a large group of unruly youths wandering the grounds.

A suspect believed to be the gunman, perhaps the only shooter, was chased down the wide thoroughfare but escaped, authorities said. He was described as a black male, 17 to 19 years old. He was still being sought late Monday.

One zoo employee said that he witnessed a group of young men beating up another youth just before he heard gunshots.

“I saw somebody who had just been stomped out, beat up, then I heard shots,” said the employee, who declined to give his name. “They sounded like firecrackers, lots of them.”

Another witness, Michael Hatcher, 19, said that a chaotic situation appeared to have escalated. “It looked like a riot, a pack of people running everywhere--running, jumping, hitting on each other.”

Thomas N. Tippett, acting fire chief of the District of Columbia, told reporters at the scene: “It’s a sad day for our city. All of us who have grown up here know that the day after Easter is a big day at the zoo.”

Tippett said the occasion, known as African American Family Celebration Day, has always been free of violence and includes music and cultural festivities.

Ramsey added that “whether or not these particular individuals were here for that event or were just visiting the zoo, we don’t know.” Nor could police establish the relationship, if any, between the victims.

Asked about a motive, Ramsey said: “We are looking into the possibility of it being gang-related, but we’re not certain.”

The violence led to calls from some elected officials for more handgun controls.

An hour after the gunfire, Vice President Al Gore disclosed the shootings at a Democratic fund-raiser in New York, bringing gasps from members of an audience that included actress Lauren Bacall.

“We really have to have mandatory child safety trigger locks, and photo license IDs for the purchase of new handguns,” Gore told the crowd. President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were also in attendance.

Clinton later telephoned Children’s Hospital in Washington to extend his wishes for a speedy recovery to the three victims there.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s nonvoting Democratic delegate to Congress, emerged from the hospital and said that the youth who suffered head wounds was “fighting for his life.”

“There’s one youngster we have to just pray for,” she said. “The others look like they’ll be all right.”

Families of the victims with whom she had spoken were understandably shaken, Norton said. She said that she sought to comfort the mother of the 11-year-old boy, who was “stunned, crying quietly, the tears coming down her face” as she looked at her son, whose eyes were half open.

“The last place these families expected to find anything but safety for their children was an Easter Monday at the zoo,” Norton observed.

Norton said that she believed security at the zoo was good and that there was no way officials could have anticipated such an incident.

But when asked whether security needed to be tightened, she said, “I hate to say so, but yes.”

For years the National Zoo, with an annual budget of more than $9 million, was famous as the home of two giant Chinese pandas, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, gifts of the People’s Republic of China as a symbol of burgeoning U.S.-Chinese ties.

But Ling-Ling died in 1992 and Hsing-Hsing, who was suffering from irreversible kidney disease and other ailments of old age, was put to sleep last November at age 28, well beyond a panda’s normal life expectancy.

Earlier this month, National Zoo officials announced that they had signed a $10-million agreement with the Chinese government to bring a new pair of young pandas to Washington for the next decade.

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Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Peter Gosselin, Eric Lichtblau, Alissa J. Rubin and Janet Wilson contributed to this story.