7 Die as Shootings Rake the Southland Overnight

Seven people died in five separate shootings in Los Angeles County late Sunday and early Monday, and only one person has been arrested.

“It was a very rough night,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Richard Pena said. “Not a good night in anyone’s book. It happens, but that’s a busy night.”

Double fatalities occurred in a Downey residential neighborhood and outside a Montebello restaurant, and separate killings occurred in Whittier, Lancaster and the Athens area.

A spokesman for the coroner’s office said that through June 30, the latest date for which statistics are available, there had been 499 homicides in Los Angeles County, compared with 455 for the same period last year.

However, spokesman Scott Carrier said, the numbers don’t begin to compare with the record 2,000 homicides that occurred in the county in the 12 months of 1992.

The coroner’s office has released the names of four victims of the latest violence; relatives of others have yet to be informed.

The attacks began shortly before 9 p.m. Sunday in the 11000 block of Lefloss Avenue in Downey, where a man and a woman, both in their 20s, were found shot to death in a car, police said.

The other double shooting occurred outside Steve’s Barbecue, at 1125 Washington Blvd. in Montebello. Deputy Steve Jauch said it wasn’t yet clear how the attack, reported at 11:19 p.m., unfolded. One person died at the scene, the other died at Beverly Community Hospital.

The coroner identified the victims as Cesar Lozano, 30, of Los Angeles, and Gilbert Alfred Sanchez, 32, of La Puente.

At 11:50 p.m., a man identified as James Edward Bates, 40, of Athens, was shot to death, and a 36-year-old man was wounded. Sheriff’s Sgt. Brenda Cambra said those shootings took place in front of an apartment building in the 11800 block of Berendo Avenue. Two people walked up to the victims and one or both opened fire and fled, investigators said.

The next fatal shooting took place in Lancaster in the Antelope Valley at 2:45 a.m. The victim was identified as Jeremy Macoy, 24, of nearby Quartz Hill, who died at a hospital.

Macoy was shot at Fig Avenue and Newgrove Street in what homicide detectives described as a business dispute. Later, Ivan Orr, 23, of Lancaster, was arrested in the area and booked on suspicion of murder. He was held without bail.

Finally, at 3:28 a.m., a man was shot to death in the 9500 block of Rufus Avenue in Whittier.

In Los Angeles, another double shooting, this one at 11:45 p.m. Sunday, occurred at Century Liquor at 2301 W. 54th St. Neither victim died, but the store owner’s 13-year-old daughter was shot in the shoulder, and a man was shot in the chest. Both were in stable condition.

There were contradictory accounts of what had happened, a police spokeswoman said.

The liquor store is in the Chesterfield Square Park area, where recent shootings have left three dead and four injured.

On Thursday, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas appeared there at a community anticrime rally.