Attempted murder charges filed in South L.A. shootout that wounded 6 homeless bystanders
Los Angeles County prosecutors have filed attempted murder charges against four suspects for their alleged roles in a mass shooting in South L.A. late last month, an incident police say was gang-related and injured a group of bystanders.
Los Angeles police said in a report that the six victims, who appeared to have been unhoused, were standing near the corner of 74th and Figueroa streets on the afternoon of Sept. 25 when gunfire broke out between two sets of suspected gang members. One group arrived to the confrontation in a vehicle and several suspects opened fire before fleeing, police said.
Five of the victims were women, four of whom are between the ages of 39 and 63, and one was a 36-year-old man, police said. The age of one female victim was not known.
The victims were treated at a local hospital for non-life threatening injuries, police said. Two others were also caught in the crossfire but unharmed, police said, which led to a total of eight counts of attempted murder filed this week against the suspects.
An LAPD officer who shot and killed an unarmed homeless man in Venice Beach in 2015 will face criminal charges based on the recommendation of a special prosecutor hired by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
Police said security video from nearby cameras showed three of the suspects arriving at the scene in a four-door Chevy with black rims, dressed in hoodies to conceal their identities. Surveillance footage, combined with other investigative methods, led gang detectives and members of the LAPD’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force to arrest four suspects — two adults and two juveniles, said Capt. Johnny Smith.
The two adult suspects, identified by police as Amaya McDonald, 19, and Joshua Jones, 22, were already in custody on charges they participated in a flash mob-style robbery of the Westfield Topanga Shopping Center in which more than $90,000 worth of merchandise was taken. Neither has yet entered a plea in response to the charges.
Jail records show that both were arrested on Oct. 4 in connection with the Topanga case.
The two juvenile suspects in the shooting were arrested earlier this week at a park in South L.A., said Smith, the patrol captain at 77th Street Division.
He declined to say which gangs were involved in the shooting, so as not to further inflame tensions between the two sets.
Interim LAPD Chief Dominic Choi said at his weekly crime briefing Tuesday that the area around the scene of the shooting had seen a recent spike in serious assaults, which include incidents of gunfire. But department statistics show that such assaults are down roughly 13% overall in the area compared to this time last year.
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