L.A. Is No Stranger to Random, Heartbreaking Gunfire

“Your children are not safe anywhere at any time.”

Even here, a continent away, the sniper’s note was chilling.

Our already frayed nerves, shot through by terrorists, now get jerked by a lunatic sharpshooter. The next victim could be anyone, it could happen any second, and there is no way to protect ourselves or our children from a copycat.

In other words, it’s suddenly easier to imagine daily life south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Bullets on the fly are not a new consideration for Karen Carter, who has raised five children in neighborhoods where the snipers are everywhere. A year ago, when she moved from Wilmington to a neighborhood just off the northwest edge of Compton, the risks grew, and so did her enforcement of the house rules.

She rattled them off for me Tuesday in her living room, where the walls are decorated with the smiling faces of children who now range in age from 8 to 19:

When the street lights go on, stop whatever you’re doing and get home fast.

If you go outside, hang out in the backyard, not the front.

Do not ride your bike down the street.

Do not go anywhere, not even to the corner, without telling Mom.

Do not walk to or from school -- call Mom for a ride.

Do not wear red, the color of the Bloods; or blue, the color of the Crips.

Shut the blinds at night, so no one can see into the house.

If you see a car come by with its lights off, hit the ground.

“You know it’s out there,” says Karen Carter. “It’s a plague, and it’s ready to grab your children.”

And adults, too. Homicides are up across Los Angeles, closing in on 500 for the year.

It’s easy to understand the hysteria caused by the Washington-area sniper. The killer terrorizes with randomness and coldhearted stealth, and is believed to have taken his 10th victim in three weeks Tuesday, when police shared the “your children are not safe” valentine.

But Khalid Shah, of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace, says 25 people -- many of them minors -- have been cut down by gang-related violence in the past two months in L.A. County’s second supervisorial district alone.

Some of those victims were hoodlums. But many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, says Shah.

This appears to have been the case with one of Karen Carter’s children.

“I was out back watering the grass,” she says, recounting the events of Oct. 6. She thought her children were out front, violating one of the rules. Carter, who worked drawing blood at Daniel Freeman Hospital until an injury put her on disability, said she found Dwayne out front and asked where his 16-year-old identical twin was.

Then she heard gunshots.

“Where’s Joseph?” she demanded. Dwayne confessed that his brother had sneaked off to the corner, only a block away, to buy a snack.

Then a little neighbor boy came running by.

“Mama Twin,” he hollered, calling Carter by her familiar name. “You better go check on your baby boy.”

The “baby boy,” who played for Centennial High’s football team, played basketball for New Mount Calvary Baptist Church, and carried a Bible to school in his backpack, wasn’t one to court trouble. It couldn’t be Joseph, Karen Carter told herself as Dwayne ran toward the sound of the gunshots and she chased after him.

Not Joseph, whom she and relatives had raised in the absence of the boy’s father, shuttling him from one activity to the next along with her other four children. School, sports, church, family affairs. One of her frequent lectures was about the dangers of an idle mind.

L.A. County Sheriff’s Sgt. Martin Rodriguez says Joseph came upon two acquaintances and they decided to go grab hamburgers at Tom’s on the northwest corner of El Segundo and San Pedro. On the way in, they were baited into an argument with a lone male on a bus bench. It continued when they came out of the restaurant.

“The lone male shouts out what is considered to be a gang slogan, and immediately after that a vehicle drives up and begins firing at the three victims,” says Sgt. Martinez.

Joshua Wyatt, 17, was dead at the scene. Joseph was shot and lay still in the street, not far from a bus bench that says, “Keep Our City Clean and Safe. Do Your Part.”

Karen Carter knew it was Joseph when she heard his twin unleash a wretched scream.

“To run up and see your child lying there,” Carter says, “You can’t even put it into words.”

Family members held Joseph’s hand in the hospital and prayed for him. He was not conscious, but he knew they were there, Karen Carter believes. She saw tears on his face, and when Dwayne told him he’d played his best football game the previous Friday, he felt Joseph squeeze his hand.

Joseph Lamont Carter died two days after he was shot.

There’s no indication he had any gang ties, says Martinez, but one of the other two kids he walked into the burger shop with might have been associated with a local crew. Whether that kid was the target is unknown, and Sgt. Martinez asks anyone with information to call (323) 890-5500.

It’s next to impossible, Dwayne says, to avoid kids you grew up with after they get caught up in gangs.

“That’s what makes them such vulnerable targets,” agrees Sgt. Martinez. “You live in the neighborhood, you go to school in the neighborhood, so how can you avoid knowing gang members? You can keep yourself straight, but merely maintaining a tie to these people puts you in the line of fire.”

Karen Carter is on her sofa next to Dwayne, saying there will be even stricter rules in her house now. She repeats all the normal kid things you can’t let your children do in “a war zone,” where the snipers are an army.

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.