As gunfire sounded, girl fled into its path

The shots came in a rapid barrage -- very loud and close. Like all the young people in her Willowbrook neighborhood, 12-year-old Janet Altamirano knew what to do: She assumed it was a drive-by and ran out of the street.

The straight-A student at Bunche Middle School had no way of knowing that this shooting was different. By running up a driveway toward the back of a house, she was heading into the gunfire.

Her uncle, Oswaldo Gutierrez, 20, was also outside Thursday evening in the neighborhood south of the Century Freeway and east of the Harbor Freeway. Gutierrez put a parked car between himself and the street. He was crouched down, glancing behind him, when he saw Janet running, then falling back as if struck in the heart by a bullet coming from the back of a carport next door.

The scene was chaos. A second girl was wounded. Sheriff’s deputies on an operation across the street were shouting and running. A toddler left in the line of fire stood clinging to a fence post screaming. No one seemed to know where the shots were coming from.

Neighbors said deputies leaped a tall iron fence to get to the driveway where Janet lay bleeding, trying to save her though still unsure if the shots had ceased. They carried her across the street, out of the line of fire. The neighborhood children stared as the deputies performed CPR on her on the sidewalk.

Then deputies had Gutierrez prone on the sidewalk with a gun to his head. There was so much confusion that they were grabbing anyone who might have fired the shots.

Janet died almost immediately. A 15-year-old neighbor girl, shot in the arm, was treated at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and released.

Sheriff’s Homicide Capt. Ray Peavy asked for the public’s help, emphasizing that people afraid to come forward can give information anonymously by calling (323) 890-5500.

“This poor little girl was doing nothing more than being a little girl at 6:20 in the evening on a Thursday,” he said. “We really need help on this one.”

Friends and neighbors mourning Janet on Friday described her as a happy girl who danced spontaneously and loved small children. She was an avid student with no disciplinary record, always immersed in some school project, said school officials and relatives.

She lived with her mother, uncle, grandparents and other relatives, but her mother was on a visit to Mexico at the time of the shooting. Relatives waited until late Friday to tell her of her daughter’s death, fearing the effect on her health.

Peavy said the shooting occurred as 20 to 30 deputies finished serving a warrant in the 2100 block of East 117th Place in the gang-related killing last Saturday of 31-year-old Michael Johnson at a party in a nearby house.

The deputies were standing outside with two occupants of the home whom they had detained. All the deputies were in uniform or wearing sheriff’s raid jackets.

Janet, wearing her green-and-white school uniform, was standing near a stroller with a girlfriend across the street.

Suddenly, there were two bursts of rapid gunfire, anywhere from eight to 25 rounds, probably from an assault-type rifle. The deputies dived for cover. “They were not in a position to determine even where the shooting was coming from,” Peavy said.

The assailant may have jumped a fence into a backyard, shooting down the driveway toward the opposite side of the street, where the deputies stood, then disappearing over back fences and through yards. Deputies locked down the area and searched with dogs. But they found no suspects.

Peavy said deputies initially assumed they were the target because they were so conspicuous and there were so many of them. But he acknowledged that the shots were fired from some distance and that the target wasn’t clear. “We don’t know for sure,” he said.

Some residents suggested that the shooting may have been retaliation for Johnson’s slaying, and that Janet was the unintended victim.

The shooter may not have realized deputies were there or didn’t care. They may have seen their enemies lined up outside by deputies and seized their chance.

Janet, “was a kind person, very friendly,” another uncle, David Gutierrez, 20, said. She had a pet hamster, and she liked to play with toddlers, like the neighbor girl who survived the shooting and whose stroller sat untouched near patches of blood on the sidewalk Friday.

Marisela Lopez, 11, recalled how she and Janet reduced themselves to giggles by imitating telenovela characters and singing, Janet ending each laugh with a dramatic choking sound.

Marisela said she had been crying all day, tearing up each time she looked at the blood in her driveway.

jill.leovy@latimes.com