Parks Relative’s Friend Was in Gang Fight, Sources Say

The young man who survived the Sunday night shooting that took the life of Lori Gonzalez, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks’ granddaughter, is a street gang member who was wounded in a confrontation with rival gangsters three weeks ago, police sources said.

Cmdr. David Kalish, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, declined Wednesday to confirm the 20-year-old man’s affiliation with the gang or to disclose his name.

“Due to the investigation’s critical stage,” Kalish said, “we are unable to discuss any specific information or disclose the identities of witnesses.”

Gonzalez, a college student who would have been 21 this Sunday, was shot to death by an assailant who approached the passenger side of her car as she and the companion prepared to drive away from the Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits restaurant at La Brea Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday. Gonzalez was behind the wheel when the gunman fired through her vehicle’s right window. Her passenger, according to police, ducked and Gonzalez was fatally wounded.

The gunman, according to LAPD investigators, ran north on La Brea, then east down an alley.

Police homicide investigators have been working under the assumption that Gonzalez’s passenger, whom she had known since childhood, was the assailant’s target. According to police sources, the man is a member of a local gang and has a felony record.

Three weeks ago, investigators say, he was shot and wounded by members of a rival gang. That confrontation occurred at Johnnie’s Pastrami, a fast-food restaurant on West Adams Boulevard not far from where Gonzalez was killed.

LAPD homicide investigators, according to sources, believe that Sunday’s attack may have been linked to the previous incident. Rival gang members, they theorize, saw the young woman and her companion at the chicken restaurant and seized the opportunity to fire at her friend. He was questioned and released Sunday night.

“We remain confident that Lori Gonzalez was not the intended target,” Kalish said, “but was the victim of tragic coincidence.”

Investigators, sources say, have been questioning the young man and are actively seeking additional witnesses. Kalish asked that anyone with information about the crime contact LAPD homicide detectives at (213) 485-2129.

Gonzalez, whose parents divorced 18 years ago, lived with her father in Mission Viejo, where she was a student at Saddleback College, taught Sunday school and worked as a drugstore clerk and telephone operator. She had passed up a family camping trip with her father, stepbrother and sister to visit her mother in Los Angeles over the Memorial Day weekend.

The funeral will be Saturday at the Crenshaw Christian Center, 7901 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. Viewing will begin at 9 a.m. and the rosary will be recited at 10 a.m. The funeral will be at 11, with burial to follow at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

The Parks family has requested that donations be made in the victim’s name to the Los Angeles Police Department Foundation.