1 Youth Slain, 3 Wounded as Gunmen Trap Them in Cul-de-Sac

A teenager was fatally shot and three others were wounded early Wednesday after they were chased into an upscale Fullerton neighborhood and trapped in a cul-de-sac by two carloads of gunmen, police said.

Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Klein said Russell Su, 18, of Irvine died at 9:25 a.m. at UC Irvine Medical Center, nine hours after he and the others were shot. Su, who was shot once in the neck, and five others tried to elude the gunmen but found no way to escape in the country club community.

Police said the three other shooting victims are young Asian males from Irvine but refused to identify them or say if any were related. Klein said one was in critical condition at UC Irvine, with a bullet wound in the face; another, shot in the back, was in serious condition at Western Medical Center in Anaheim; the third victim was in serious condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, suffering from bullet wounds in the shoulder, biceps and thigh.

Klein said investigators did not want to release the identities of the wounded teenagers for fear of retaliation against their families. He said police did not know the motive for the shooting or whether it was gang-related.

He said investigators believe all of the 15 shots at the scene were fired by the assailants, who were described by police as “an unknown number of male Asians, 18 to 20 years old.” Klein said the assailants sped away in two compact cars, one light, the other dark.

According to police, the incident began about 12:30 a.m. at Emery Park, near the shooting scene. The six youths were at the park when two carloads of assailants pulled up, and shouting started, Klein said.

“We don’t know if it’s a gang shooting, retaliation or a contract hit,” Klein said. “We still have a lot of unanswered questions. It’s a very complex investigation for now.”

Two of the six escaped unharmed. No weapons were found in their cars.

At the scene, spent shell casings littered the 1800 block of Island Drive, which is lined with $500,000 homes in the middle of Los Coyotes Country Club.

Residents awoke about 12:35 a.m. to the sound of gunfire. In one house at the end of the cul-de-sac, where the victims tried to turn their cars around, a window was pierced by a stray bullet.

There were five casings in the street in front of Maureen Redfield’s home. Redfield, whose backyard abuts the golf course, said she and her husband were in bed when she heard the first shots.

“I woke him up and told him I heard gunshots, but he didn’t believe me. . . . Some time later we heard a knock at the door, and I made him take the gun out of the safe. But it was the police, wanting to know if anybody in our home was shot,” Redfield said.

Mohamed Gaffoor, whose house is at the end of the cul-de-sac, said he awoke to the sound of screeching tires. His wife and son were asleep at the time.

“This is a very quiet neighborhood,” Gaffoor said. “I heard the tires and then a loud bang, followed by three or four gunshots.”

He said the bang was the sound of one of the victims’ cars snapping the mailbox in front of his house as the driver tried to turn around.

When police arrived, all of the cars involved in the incident were gone. A few minutes later, officials at St. Jude Medical Center notified police that they were treating four gunshot victims in the emergency room.

Officers rushed to the hospital and found the victims’ three vehicles, two of which had been struck by bullets, Klein said. The cars were impounded. The shooting victims were later transported to different hospitals.

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This story has been edited to reflect the following correction to the published text: The victim’s name was incorrectly published as Russell Hsu.

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