It's easy to forget gangs still kinda sorta rule the streets of L.A. when your neighborhood is turning into the L.A. version of the yuppifying Mission District, without the feel-good parades and excellent Mexican food on each corner. But sometimes you get a mean reminder. City News Service is reporting that the LAPD is looking for a "person of interest" in a shooting last night that left a 9-year-old girl in "grave condition":
The girl was wounded last night about 8:30 at 831 E. Kensington Road, near Sunset Boulevard, in a gang shootout that occurred across the street, said Los Angeles Department Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell. Detective Fred Faustino, who heads the homicide unit of the LAPD's Rampart Station, said "a car full of men pulled up just outside her home. One man jumped out and confronted another group of men. The man fired, the other members pulled out guns and began to shoot."
That's right up the block from my house, in a part of my neighborhood I try not to walk through at night, no matter how nice the houses are starting to look. There must a Rules of the Barrio written somewhere that explains how once you cross a street to another block, you might as well be in another area code. CNS says the girl was operated on at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
* Friday update: LAT story here.