Boy, 3, Killed in Shooting

The Martin family had dragged their pool table onto the driveway months ago so everyone on their Compton block could hang out together. On Friday night, as they all laughed at a neighbor showing off with a cue stick, a car drove by and two gunmen got out and starting firing at them.

When the shooting stopped, a 3-year-old boy lay dead beneath his bike, his mother had been hit four times and three others were wounded, shattering the tranquillity that residents say West Bennett Street has long been known for.

Tracy Martin, 34, who was hit in the chest, back, thigh and leg, screamed “My baby! My baby!” after her son was struck in the chin, said her nephew, Matthew Martin Jr., 19, who also was wounded.

The child, Denzel Sanderson, was the joy of the neighborhood, known for hopping his bike as if it were a low-rider. It was through a car club named Just Dip’n that blacks and Latinos on West Bennett Street forged friendships that residents said made for a close-knit neighborhood.

Denzel had been their little mascot, and his uncle, Matthew Martin Sr., 39, had customized a motorized toy Jeep for the child, who rode it up and down the sidewalk while wearing a Just Dip’n jersey.

The last thing neighbor Debbie Grant heard Denzel say was, “Mommy, can I park my bike here?”

Grant, 46, was sitting near the pool table when the shooting started. Another neighbor jumped on top of her to protect her, and he was hit. “I think that’s what saved me,” she said.

When Tracy Martin came out of surgery Saturday at Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center, her family told her that Denzel had died. Hospital officials would not release her condition.

Tracy Martin’s sister Marnitia, who helped break the news, said her youngest sister was devastated but not surprised. “I think she pretty much knew because no one would tell her anything,” she said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives have asked that anyone with information about the shooting call (323) 890-5500. The only details from detectives came in a prepared statement: “Two suspects exited the vehicle and started firing handguns indiscriminately into the crowd, striking five victims.”

“We were just hanging out, having a good time,” said Mathew Martin Jr., limping from his gunshot wound. “It just sounded like fireworks.... They are just cowards. I don’t know why people want to come up and commit hate crimes for no reason.”

The Martin family has been a fixture on West Bennett Street for more than 15 years. Denzel’s grandfather, a contractor, had bought three houses on the block over the years, and three of his children and their families had moved in.

The street is one of modest houses on big lots. A few residents keep horses in backyard stables and ride them along Bennett, adding an unusual rural feel to the street in the middle of a city.

Matthew Martin Sr., a plumber, lives with his own five children in the house with the pool table outside, making it the unofficial car club headquarters.

Tracy Martin, who is on disability leave from a cashier job at Los Angeles International Airport, lives in a house behind her brother with Denzel and an older son.

“Everybody around here knows the boy,” Matthew Martin Sr. said, recalling how Denzel would entertain the adults by riding in his Jeep, hitting the switches and making it do tricks. “He was just a hydraulics freak and I had gotten him into it,” he said.

Even the mailman was fond of the child, nicknamed “Munchie” for his habit of running after the ice cream truck to buy snacks.

“Not the little one, not the little one,” letter carrier Vern Carroll said as he delivered mail Saturday and found the Martins and their neighbors in mourning.

Debra Stubberfield, whose 25-year-old son, Marlon, was wounded and is recovering at a hospital, has lived on the street for 28 years. The condition of the fifth victim, who was not identified by sheriff’s deputies, could not be determined.

“It’s peaceful here,” Stubberfield said. “We have friends who come over and say it’s so quiet on the block. We have people who have lived here for years.... We try and keep it so everyone knows each other.”

In the last six weeks, however, Sheriff’s Sgt. Drew Birtness said, the normally calm street had been marred by three gang-related shootings.

“None of the shooters or victims lived on Bennett Street,” Birtness said. The incidents “started someplace else and ended” on Bennett, he said.

None of those gathered to console the Martins on Saturday could figure out the motive for Friday’s shootings. In their car club, the only arguments revolved around talk like “my car is hittin’ harder than yours,” Matthew Martin Jr. said.

Several neighbors said the club gave them a reason to get together frequently.

“Just last weekend, we all went on a picnic in Fountain Valley,” said Jose Madrid, 16, who has grown up on West Bennett Street. “We don’t gang-bang or nothin’, just hang out and have fun. This is like family to me, all these people,” he said, waving his arms at the houses on his street.

A friend, David Gibson, 37, was dismayed to see the shot-out window of a pickup truck and bullet holes in the pool table. He said the gunmen took the neighborhood hobby “and ruptured it.”