Girl, 15, Shot Outside Locke High

A 15-year-old girl was in grave condition Thursday night after a gunman opened fire outside Locke High School in South Los Angeles shortly after school let out, police said.

Delusa Allen was shot shortly before 3 p.m. as she was leaving the school at 110th Street and Avalon Boulevard with two friends. Assistant Police Chief George Gascon said Allen was hit once or twice in the upper body. She underwent surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

“We believe at this point she will not survive,” Gascon said.

Allen was about 50 feet from the school entrance when a man on the street began “shooting at another vehicle or other pedestrians,” said homicide Det. Sal LaBarbera.

“She is completely innocent,” he said. “She was just leaving school where her aunt normally meets her.”

The gunman, described as 18 to 20 years old, fired at least three times and then ran, probably down 110th Street, LaBarbera said. He was still at large.

School let out about 2:40 p.m., and on a busy day about 1,000 students can pass through that area, LaBarbera said. Police did not know how many were in the area at the time.

Student Janette Gomez, 17, said she was walking along Avalon when she heard two or three shots.

“I knew it was gunfire because I can recognize gunshots,” she said. “I heard screams, and people started crowding around.”

Gascon said Allen was “basically at the wrong place at the wrong time. We believe [she] was not the intended target.”

Silvia Rousseau, the local district superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said the incident was “very unfortunate at a time when the school is making a tremendous turnaround.

“The discouraging thing is we cannot control the streets.”

Los Angeles school officials have taken dramatic steps over the last few years to make the 3,300-student campus safer and to improve its academics. The district has added security and reorganized the school, dividing it into five smaller groups.

Locke is on a federal list of troubled schools as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated some of the changes.

Nancy Ramirez, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District police, said two officers were assigned to the school.

The investigation was proceeding rapidly because of community cooperation, Gascon said. “We remain very hopeful that we will be able to solve this crime very quickly,” he said.

Times staff writer Cara DiMassa contributed to this report.