Gangs Blamed for More Gunfire in Pico Neighborhood

By Jorge Casuso

May 21 -- For the third consecutive day, shots were fired in a violence-riddled pocket of the Pico Neighborhood on Tuesday, and, once again, no one was injured in what police are calling a gang-related incident.

The shots were fired at 5:18 p.m. in an alley behind the 1800 block of 17th Street, within three blocks of where similar incidents were reported Sunday and Monday.

It was the same block where two shots were fired on the night of May 9, one of them piercing the window of a bedroom of an affordable housing project where children were asleep.

“We can say that yesterday’s shooting was gang-related,” said Lt. Frank Fabrega, the police department spokesman.

A witness reported seeing the suspect’s vehicle -- a newer model four-door sedan -- driving southbound down the alley, police said. Police are investigating the incidents and have stepped up patrols.

“We’ve increased our patrol deployment in the area, and we’re working already with both probation and parole officers,” Fabrega said. “Not only are we putting officers in uniform, but officers in plain clothes now.”

Tuesday’s incident followed two drive-by shootings on Sunday and Monday afternoon in what increasingly appears to be a racial gang war, sources said.

In the first incident, two male Hispanics driving southbound on 17th Street near Michigan Avenue approached several subjects standing on the sidewalk and opened fire, police said.

On Monday, two suspects described by witnesses as male Blacks in a small vehicle fired several shots on the 1900 block of 20th Street.

Neighborhood leaders believe the shootings are related and fear more violence to come.

“It’s very serious, and it’s escalating,” said Oscar de la Torre, the executive director of the Pico Youth and Family Center, which works with at-risk youth. “There’s just a series of incidents, and now what we’re dealing with is retaliatory shootings.”

De la Torre, who is a member of the School Board, believes the shooting incidents involve youth who are being released from prison, where violence between Blacks and Hispanics is escalating.

“There’s just a lot of racial animosity in the prisons now, and they’re bringing all that negative energy to the streets,” de la Torre said. “It’s gang-involved youth spilling from prison to the streets.

“It’s sad, but people don’t realize there’s a huge problem with our youth until somebody dies,” de la Torre said.

Tuesday’s shots were fired on the same block where a bullet pierced an upper-floor bedroom window in a Community Corp building on May 9, just missing the head of a young girl sleeping in her bunk bed, according to the girl’s mother, Marizsa Bravo-Casillas.

“One of the bullets went right through our 2nd story CHILDREN'S bedroom!” Bravo-Casillas wrote in an email to friends and family. “It came through right above Mia's dresser, at about the level of her forehead.

“Then it went through the 2nd wall, just above Joey's dresser, entering our bathroom, shattering our glass shower doors, and then landing in our bathroom sink,” she wrote. “We are all okay, but feeling very scared. We are also feeling VERY LUCKY!!!”

In what authorities believe was an unrelated incident two days earlier, a Santa Monica High School student was arrested after a fight and charged with possession of a deadly weapon on school grounds, gang enhancement and felony probation violation.

The victim was a Black student who told police he had finished lunch and was headed back to class when he was approached by the suspect, a Latino student , who brandished a knife and pushed him in the chest, police said.

“The victim said he felt a pointed blunt object when he was struck by the suspect and fell to the ground,” Fabrega said. “They’d been having an ongoing dispute.”

The suspect was taken to a juvenile facility and booked, Fabrega said. No bail has been set.

School superintendent John Deasy said there is no reason to believe the incident is tied to the violence in the Pico Neighborhood.

“Some of the kids in that were involved in some of the things in the neighborhood, but there is not a direct tie,” Deasy said. “This young man came and caused quite a stir, that’s for sure,” Deasy said, referring to the suspect.

The area where the recent shootings occurred has been the scene of numerous shootings during recent years, some of them gang-related.

“I feel this is another indication of a potential tragedy just waiting to happen,” Bravo-Casillas wrote in her email. “I hope we can do something as a community to stop the violence.”