Two killed, five hurt in Willowbrook shooting

Two people were killed and five others were wounded Sunday afternoon in a shooting in the Willowbrook area of Los Angeles, according to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.

The shooting was reported at 4:13 p.m. at the 12200 block of Blakley Avenue near East 122nd Street, a residential area. A 17-year-old boy and an adult male were declared dead at the scene, authorities said. Five other people were taken to hospitals to be treated for gunshot wounds.

Laquincy Zimmerman was at church when she got the call that her son had been shot. She rushed to her home on a tree-lined residential block in Willowbrook just west of Compton Avenue and, arriving before the police, saw two people lying dead in the street and others injured in what she described to The Times as a drive-by shooting. She said her son was among the wounded but declined to give his name.

“The 17-year-old was lying dead right there in the street,” Zimmerman said, pointing up Blakely Avenue past yellow police tape toward 122nd Place. “My house was torn up. Shattered glass, everything.”

Speaking Sunday night near the shooting scene, Zimmerman said her 21-year-old son was shot in both legs and taken to a hospital. “He’s in surgery now,” she said about 9 p.m.

Officials did not confirm Zimmerman’s account, saying that the investigation was still ongoing.

Zimmerman said a Nest camera on her neighbor’s porch captured video of two SUVs — one red, one black — shooting rapid-fire along a quiet block in this unincorporated South Los Angeles neighborhood. The video has been turned over to law enforcement, she said.

Zimmerman said that when she got to the scene minutes after the shooting, there were “over 100 shells on the ground. Two-and-a-half inch bullets, like from an AK-47.”

A weekly motorcycle rider gathering was underway on the block, but she does not believe the motorcycle riders were the target of the shooting.

“I’ve seen shooting here before,” Zimmerman said. “But what were they thinking shooting like that here today? Our kids were outside playing and everything.”