January 20, 2011
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Piggyback School Shootings in SoCal
Just Another Day in L.A.
(provided for comparison) I’ve deleted anything except gunshot deaths, although I’ve included police victims. (Cause in L.A. you never know whether the police shot prematurely or not. Long Beach cops killed a guy holding one of those pistol grip lawn nozzles a few months ago.)
01/01/11 (Saturday)
Jose Celeridad, a 42-year-old Latino, was shot and killed Saturday, Jan. 1, in the 500 block of West Olive Street in Inglewood.
01/02/11 (Sunday)
Dnary Fowler, a 19-year-old black man, was shot and killed by police Sunday, Jan. 2, in the 8700 block of McKinley Avenue in Green Meadows.
01/04/11 (Tuesday)
Enedine Vigil, a 33-year-old white woman, was shot and killed Tuesday, Jan. 4, in the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.
Douglas Bland, a 26-year-old black man, was fatally shot Tuesday, Jan. 4, near 109th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard in Inglewood.
Carlos Ibanez, a 28-year-old Latino, died Tuesday, Jan. 4, three days after he was shot in the 6200 block of Babcock Avenue in Valley Glen.
Louis Smith, a 33-year-old black man, died Tuesday, Jan. 4, a day after he was shot in the 1500 block of East 103rd Street in Watts.
01/07/11 (Friday)
Keenan Handy, a 20-year-old black man, died Friday, Jan. 7, a day after he was shot in the 1300 block of South Long Beach Boulevard in Compton.
01/08/11 (Sunday)
Derrick Abernathy, a 20-year-old black man, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy Saturday, Jan. 8, in the 8000 block of Wadsworth Avenue in Florence.
01/10/11 (Monday)
Edgar Velazquez, a 36-year-old Latino, was shot and killed Monday, Jan. 10, in the 7000 block of South Normandie Avenue in Vermont Knolls.
01/11/11 (Tuesday)
Nestor Torres, a 37-year-old Latino, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy Tuesday, Jan. 11, near Floral Drive and Brannick Avenue in East Los Angeles.
01/12/11 (Wednesday)
Leonard Thrower, an 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed Wednesday, Jan. 12, in the 2000 block of North Santa Fe Avenue in Compton.
01/13/11 (Thursday)
Marcus Walker, a 20-year-old black man, died Thursday, Jan. 13, two days after he was shot near Alondra Boulevard and Aprilia Avenue in Compton.
Eugene Ersek, a 56-year-old white man, died Thursday, Jan. 13, five days after he was shot in the 13400 block of South Avalon Boulevard in Willowbrook.
01/14/11 (Friday)
Reginald Doucet Jr., a 25-year-old black man, was shot and killed by police Friday, Jan. 14, in the 5200 block of Crescent Park West in Playa Vista.
Juan Miranda, an 18-year-old Latino, was fatally shot Friday, Jan. 14, in the 7800 block of South Eastern Avenue in Bell Gardens.
01/15/11 (Saturday)
Travis Patterson, a 31-year-old black man, was shot and killed Saturday, Jan. 15, in the 1700 block of East 111th Place in Watts.
01/17/11 (Monday)
Nahun Chavez, a 34-year-old Latino, was shot and killed Monday, Jan. 17, in the 140 block of West 73rd Street in Florence.
A Latino, identified by coroner’s officials only as being in his 20s, died Monday, Jan. 17 after he was shot in the 500 block of West 98th St. in Vermont Vista.Above statistics From The L.A. Times Homicide Report blog.
I sometimes, shall we say, “joke” (although nothing about this entry is intended as humorous) that I’ve survived over half a century in the Los Angeles area without having been shot. You sort of know you might catch a wayward bullet if you’re wandering around (or even driving) in certain neighborhoods. So you stay away from them. (Unless, of course, you live there, and then you have no choice.) I live in a nice mobile home community. It’s in the unincorporated city of Harbor City, next to Wilmington. We have a guard at the gate during the evening hours. (I don’t know if he’s armed.) There are quite a few areas in this town, and in Wilmington, where I might be caught dead if I ventured to take a walk in the evening. (Or perhaps even a drive.) Some of the people I know are or have been involved in gangs. There has been a vivid gang presence in the Los Angeles area for a long while. I’ve lived with roommates who owned small arsenals of weapons, including the automatic kind. Guns in L.A. are a fact of life, or, shall we say, death.
The city to the north of Harbor City is Gardena. Yesterday, at Gardena High, 22 blocks from me (although I was at work in Long Beach, another city with some suspect neighborhoods, in some of which I’ve lived.) A 17 year old special education student, (who has been arrested) not known as violent, brought a gun to school in a book bag. The gun went off “accidentally” in 3rd period health class after he set down the book bag. Two students were injured. Thankfully, nobody was killed. The boy supposedly brought the gun into the classroom for his protection. He has been bullied before. HERE is the L.A. Times entry from which I got this information this morning. The campus is supposed to conduct random checks for firearms. They were a bit lax.
When I used to pick up Pat’s daughter at Poly High in Long Beach, there were metal detectors at the entrance. Across town at Wilson (the high school featured in the film “Freedom Writers”) at the time they didn’t have them. Undoubtedly Gardena High doesn’t either. I remember that it seemed quite strange to see metal detectors at a high school (and this was in 1992) plus police cruisers parked outside the campus. Poly was known for violent outbursts, and there have been countless other Los Angeles high schools in the news throughout the years in which fights and altercations cause campus lockdowns. Even when I attended school at Rosemead (in the San Gabriel Valley) back in 1968-1971, we didn’t go to football games at crosstown rival El Monte (the city where I grew up) because there were sometimes shootings at the football games.
In Michael Moore’s documentary “Bowling for Columbine” he points out that most of the “school shootings” including Columbine, are instigated by well to do white kids. Although there are enough shootings here in the southland, we really don’t have “school shootings” like Columbine, where a disgruntled student takes a gun to class and opens fire on his classmates. What we have are kids who keep guns partially because they have been initiated into gangs for which the gun is a badge of honor. I was talking to someone at work today about the Gardena kid being able to take a gun into class. The guy said, “Come on Mike. Even with the metal detectors, if somebody wants to get a gun on campus, it’s pretty easy.” I had to agree. It alarmed me when I went back to Rosemead High for the 50th anniversary celebration in 1999 and saw razor wire topping the chain link fences around the school. It was intimidating, but someone with a strong hook could lob a bookbag over the fence quite easily early in the morning when nobody’s looking. I’m sure there are other ways was well. Kids are pretty smart.
I began to compose a blog entry this morning. I read Steve Lopez’s column in the Times: “It’s Time to Inject Sanity into the Gun Debate.” It’s a pretty good article. Steve is a local columnist who got famous nationally when Robert Downey Jr. played him in the film, “The Soloist”. The next section is from his article. His words are in blue.
“…we all know it’s not possible to seal off every campus from every kid trying to sneak in a gun, nor will there come a day when we’re all safe from gun violence, regardless of legislative initiatives. But in a country that averages 82 gunshot deaths a day, can’t we do a lot better in limiting the number and type of guns, and can we please make it harder to buy a Glock than to buy a can of Coke?
Does anyone believe that Jared Lee Loughner, the accused Tucson shooter who was kicked out of college for scaring people, should have been allowed to legally buy a weapon capable of firing 31 rounds without reloading?
In California, proud members of the “open-carry” crowd have been showing up in recent months at restaurants, coffee shops and other locales with holstered guns, as if they all think they’re Rooster Cogburn…And yes, it’s legal under California law, provided the gun is not loaded.
“What good is an unloaded gun?” asks an informational listing at http://www.californiaopencarry.org. “Obviously, not much. However, with a little practice, one can easily load a handgun in under two seconds.”"Because I had to go to work, I saved my unwritten blog entry and figured I’d finish it and post it at lunch. While preparing my microwaved noodles, somebody in the break room had the TV on a “school shooting” was being reported in Woodland Hills, in the San Fernando Valley. Not exactly L.A., but SoCal, and a day after the Gardena High shooting. In Woodland Hills, the El Camino High School campus had to go on lockdown. This was “breaking news” at the time. A 40 year old man was later apprehended. Obviously he wansn’t a student. I remarked to someone at work I hoped he wasn’t a teacher.
I don’t own a gun. As I stated earlier in this entry, I know and have lived with people who do. I went hunting with a friend once a long time ago in the hills near Palm Springs. He brought along a couple of .22 caliber rifles. They’re quite small, but they’re guns, and a .22 can kill a person just as dead as a .45 magnum. Or an AK-47. I’d never shot a gun before. We were squirrel hunting. First, my friend set up some empty beer cans (you can guess where the cans came from, a few moments earlier they had been in the cooler in the trailer before we drank them.) We practiced shooting. My friend gave me pointers. I tell you, I really enjoyed myself. I liked shooting the rifle. I liked seeing the cans fall. I felt good. Powerful. On top of the world. I didn’t kill any critters, sadly. But I possibly wasn’t going to go grill me some squirrel if we had. Mainly, we were just a couple of guys out hunting. There’s nothing wrong with that.
That was the first and last time I shot a gun. I have no patience. I have what has been called a “hair trigger” personality. (That’s a gun reference, too, “hair trigger”.) I figured with my tendency to get mad really quick, if I owned a gun, I might shoot it like I sometimes shoot off my mouth. I figured I wasn’t the right type of person to own a gun.
One of my readers exclaimed on my pulse about the Woodland Hills shooting this afternoon that this seems to be an epidemic. As you can see from the list I provided at the beginning of this entry, in L.A. death seems to be a fact of life on the streets. People seem to be getting shot every day.
As I frequently am apt to write, I don’t know the answers. But I sure do think about the questions. I wrote about how easy it was to get shot on the freeway in L.A. back in 2005. Shooting deaths always get to me. Kids get bullied a lot. It’s easy to get a gun. Something I’ve been calling “blog mentality”, where the vitriol and meanspiritedness evident in the blogosphere (yes, even in my beloved Xanga community from time to time.) is spilling into the “real world”. People get mad, they have a weapon. It’s fun and easy to shoot a gun. It only takes a fraction of a second.
And a life (or two, or three, or more) is lost.
People (some with guns) will argue about the “right” to bear arms. It’s in the constitution. Of course, redcoats aren’t running through the streets anymore, but that doesn’t stop the gun lobby from defending the 2nd amendment. The N.R.A. is pretty powerful. I’m not against gun ownership at all. But I like Steve Lopez’ question which I paraphrase: “Should ANYBODY be able so easily to buy a gun that’s capable of firing 31 rounds without reloading?”
Something is wrong. That’s all I know. And that’s what I hear when I listen to the Voice of Reason.
EDIT: 01/20/11 7:00 a.m. HERE is the latest news concerning the Woodland Hills shooting. An campus officer was shot but it was not on campus. Nine schools and 9000 students were put on lockdown. Another shooting occured in Bell yesterday afternoon outside of the high school when a 16 year old was shot and wounded walking home. I mentioned how a commenter had called this “an epidemic”. In my entry linked above from 2005 about the freeway shootings that year, I pondered the same thing. This is more than sad. I don’t know what more to say. I repeat. SOMETHING is wrong. MFN/ppf
EDIT: 5:00 p.m. I am going to update this entry one last time, so apologies to those few who might get upset that I’m “timestamping” as most Xangans put it. (The entry is already timestamped. One “updates” the timestamp to the current time.) I only do this when I actually add an edit. These days Xanga is less populated than it seemed to be before I went on hiatus in the fall. This entry is on the front page. I’m updating for those on my sub list who haven’t seen it in their inbox. I wrote this to spark a conversation, and only received 14 comments, one of which is my “reply” comment. Also, I created a “plugz”, so I’m officially “back”. MFN/ppf
Posted: January 19, 2011 5:32 PM
Comments (22)
very thorough blogging of that situation, thanks!
I think I first realized that the gun-lobbyists were insane when I heard one of them argue, after the Virginia Tech shootings, that every teacher and student on campus should have been armed in order to prevent the one guy who did shoot from doing more harm. And then something like this happens. Who knows where that kid got the gun, but if he was carrying it around in his backpack, I’m willing to bet he wasn’t well trained on how to use it. My point, I guess, is that guns just lead to more guns, and more violence, and more people getting hurt or killed.
I shot a BB gun once, in my uncle’s backyard in Colorado. It was fun. I have a pretty decent aim, which is surprising considering how awful my vision is. But never have I had any desire to shoot anything living with such a weapon. Violence begets violence. Guns just lead to more violence. That’s how I see it.
I didn’t realize how dangerous your area was. There are some bad areas here in Jersey, but I stay away from those areas. I don’t go to the bad sections of Newark at night and I try to stay away from the urban cities in general. I grew up in suburbia and while there’s killings and gangs in Elizabeth and Newark, not far away, my hometown somehow has retained that innocence. As has my current suburban digs. I guess I’m lucky. This was a very well done blog. Stay safe!
A good, thoughtful post, Mike. We’ve been lucky so far that these “school shootings” have not killed anybody, although it’s too soon to know how one of the victims will recover. It amazes me that we have to lock down 10 schools all day (and into the evening for some of them) in order to ensure that the kids all eventually get home safely. Apparently Gardena had security equipment they were not using, and the El Camino situation occurred off campus, and did not involve a student (school police have authority for 10 blocks off campus) — how do we ensure student safety in that case? Was Gardena possibly a fallout of the state’s budget issues as staffing is reduced? I think we are lucky we have not yet had “a Columbine,” though perhaps some of the gang activities are almost as serious. Again, thank you for posting this!
There are so many underlying issues. There are examples from the story of Cain and Abel to today’s headlines. Voices of Reason are too often silenced by those with, to phrase it nicely, perhaps ulterior motives. It’s been on my mind way too much for the last six weeks or so, and I’ve tried to get it out by putting it down here on my blog. I hope things are meant to turn out for the good, whatever that may be.
I kinda think that we don’t need guns that are …what “automatic”? I have a hand gun, but if someone wanted to kill me, I wouldn’t have time to react. However, I might take that baseball bat next to my bed and beat the crap out of them first! After 9/11, I always said I would fly with steel toed boots and a packaged of sharpened pencils!
I bought my first gun when I was 18. But I have never shot anyone yet. Guns are only as bad as the people that own them. Unfortunately a lot of bad people own them or even more dangerous people having access to guns that don’t know how to handle them.
So sad to hear of more shootings. It makes my heart ache.
Thanks for sharing all of this.
HUGS!
So awful world we have when innocent people and kids are not safe anymore in their own places. It’s a jungle out there!
Thoughtful… I don’t own/carry because I don’t know if I could bring myself to use a gun in a situation so having it there makes it worse. I can see where you are coming from declaring “something is wrong” but I don’t think this is something that law can control- an outright ban makes it so only criminals will have the guns which circumvents the purpose of the ban.
Call me cynical but where there is a will there will be a way. Much like the “war on drugs” a black market will allow people to procure what they desire. There is no easy solution; but the object is not at fault it is the user. All I can purpose is education and training- make the best of a tough situation.
@Diva_Jyoti_3 - Dear Allison, Thanks for the rec.
@leaflesstree - Dear Turquoise. I’m an L.A. booster, and I try to paint a more positive picture of the southland on my blog. But this is going too far, even for L.A. I visited N.J. once, back in 1977, and we went through Newark on the train. We didn’t get off. Our destination was East Orange, and it was a really nice neighborhood then I don’t know about what it’s like today. L.A. has pockets of nice neighborhoods and scary ones. If you live here, you know where it’s safe. But the sad fact is that it’s getting to be where nobody is safe anywhere in the country! But of course others around the world would say that we’re just waking up to that fact. Look at most of the world, and you’ll find strife and terror. Even world class cities in Europe like Paris and London can be quite scary.
@slmret - Dear Janet. If memory serves, there was a Columbine like school shooting in San Diego last October. And we have always had “disgruntled employees” “going postal”. I remember one guy unrolling a banner on the freeway after he was chased down, cause he wanted his “fifteen minutes of fame.”
@an_OM_aly - Dear Linda. I’m frequently saying mankind has been killing himself since the beginning of his existence. Seems to be in his “human nature.” Anyone who’s read my essay “History” always says it’s pretty negative, and I always try to be positive. However, the facts speak for themselves. I get more frightened and upset about mankind’s seeming destiny by the moment.
@Ro_ad808 - Dear Michael. I guess I could be said to favor of more “gun control” than there already is in place, and people roaming about with holstered guns, like in the “old west” really scares me. We keep them in our glove compartments out here and shoot the guy who cuts us off on the freeway! An outright ban would be ridiculous, as you state. Whenever there is a shooting like in Tuscon, some gun loving pundit comes out of the woodwork and exclaims that if everyone there had a gun, the shooter wouldn’t have injured so many. WTF? Bullets flying with no regard to where they’re landing is what I envision. The old homily “guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” is true. And if there weren’t guns, there would be arrows, and if there weren’t arrows, it would be sticks and stones.
Dear Mike,
SOMETHING is wrong. How true those words are, how sad, how… lost. I, with you, am lost. I don’t know what to do. I feel helpless. I feel scared. But…
SOMETHING is wrong. What is it, and how do we fix it?
Khai
I witnessed a gang shooting while walking through the teacher’s parking lot. There is no naked like that kind of naked.
I have shot and owned guns ever since I was about 12. In those days if you lived in the country, you were “supposed” to have at least a .22 rifle. I became interested in competitive target shooting while in the army – pistols were and are my speciality; but I have not competed for many years now (arthritis makes the heavy target pistols difficult to manage).
The last time I killed an animal was three or four years ago – I shot a rabid raccoon that was attacking a neighbor’s dog. Even though this was out in the Maine woods, none of the neighbors even owned a gun. I had an old .22 (actually the first one I ever owned – a real antique).
It’s obvious that my generation’s customs regarding firearms are now pretty much out of date, but the NRA still maintains the right of us all to have unrestricted access to just about any firearm type weapon – even military weapons with no practical use for anything except shooting up the landscape (The AK47 is so inaccurate that you would have trouble hitting a barn door – from inside the barn – with a single shot, but of course it is designed to lay down a barrage or 20-30 at a time). Fortunately ammunition is fairly expensive.
Yes, there is something wrong, Mike. We are a people stripped of hope, full of rage, pain and fear ~and sadly, we react with violence. All of us, on some level, experience these emotions. Though we are fully equipped with communication technology, we are in disconnect mode. We deal in the virtual so much~ that reality is altered.
Just my thoughts~ thank you for writing this post, for not turning your head the other way and pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
@Ro_ad808 - Believe it or not, you do what you are trained to do. Your brain does not physically have time to process “should I do this?” in a self-defense situation. If you want to defend yourself, get a gun and go to the range and practice shooting at things. You will act how you train yourself to act.
I’ve never owned a gun nor been tempted to shoot one, even for fun. Except maybe in a video game. What I think about guns is that they have their uses, but for most people, carrying a gun just magnifies the possibilities that exist for human error. Errors in judgement, especially. Something that can get you or someone else dead, if you make a mistake, is not to be treated lightly.
I am horrified every time I hear of a push to allow weapons in a bar. Like THAT’S not a recipe for disaster. Come ON, people!
Welcome back. I don’t really have much to say on this topic. I think it’s important that people be allowed to have weapons, because if we’re all disarmed then the “power of the people” will no longer matter, we won’t be able to fight for ourselves if something were to happen. I do think that people are getting guns way to easily, and there needs to be much stricter standards on who owns a gun. Unfortunately, the criminals aren’t going to care – they will get their hands on guns no matter if the law allows them to or not, they don’t care about breaking laws to get what they want.
I think there is an epidemic among young people with guns – I am not pointing my fingers and saying that video games CAUSE violence - I don’t believe that, HOWEVER I DO think that the violence in video games creates a mindset in which you can shoot someone in a split second without any thought to the long-term consequences (because in a game there are no consequences, in fact more often than not there are “points” or rewards for killing people) and when they close down the game – no harm no foul. Then they get into a fight in real life, pull out a gun and shoot, having no concept of what that shot will mean, the endless ramifications.
it’s all very sad, and there are probably a thousand different reasons for each shooting. there are no simple solutions, and the problem is that everyone is looking to blame one thing or the other, all in the midst of their own agendas, which isn’t going to solve anything.
I love it when you say “it only got 14 comments” lol.. i think if I got 14 comments on a single post that would be the most comments I got on a single post in a year!
@opticalnoise - Dear Khai, Yes, “How do we fix it?” I’d like to think It’s somewhat like avoiding Xanga drama, which I do pretty well. When I walk down the street, I look at the people I pass, and I say hello, whether or not they’re a little old lady or a tattooed ruffian. I don’t exude cockiness, but I proclaim in my stature and body language that I ‘belong’. Of course I wouldn’t do something stupid like wear red in a Crips neighborhood. (And I do try to stay away from the really volatile areas of town.) I’ve had a shotgun aimed right at my head during a robbery when I was part of the management team at a big box retailer in one of the worst areas of Culver City. I think I can get out of being shot in a “confrontation”. However, when some disgruntled or crazy wacko starts shooting, nobody’s safe. I think perhaps we should do a better job as a society, to be able to pinpoint who the potential wackos are before they go get their guns. The kid at Gardena High got his from his stepfather. I think parents who own guns should attempt to make sure their kids can’t get ahold of them.
@tychecat - Dear Dick, The rabid raccoon story reminds me of Atticus Finch squaring off against the rabid dog. “It’s obvious that my generation’s customs regarding firearms are now pretty much out of date.” A couple of generations before you and everyone wore a gun. When I was growing up, I had plenty of toy guns. They were shooting it up on TV every day and every night. Guns are part of every society, too, not just America. It was the quick assembly of interchangable weapons parts which started the manufacturing trend which later fueled the industrial revolution. Gang members frequently use weapons such as AK-47s. The ease with which these automatic weapons are obtainable might be a point where society can start to curb some of the violence, but we all know that violence will keep happening. That’s the enigma.
@WildWomanOfTheWest - Dear Tamy, You pretty much say in a few words what I’m getting at. “Though we are fully equipped with
communication technology, we are in disconnect mode. We deal in the
virtual so much~ that reality is altered.” And I predict that the internet will someday morph into virtual reality (like the holodeck on the old Star Trek Generations show) I’ve blogged before about how disturbed I am that people who are in the same space would rather text each other than speak to each other face to face. Is communication a lost art? On the internet , in the blogosphere, people seem to talk “at” each other, and not to each other. This “blog mentality” is spilling into real life faster than I can fathom.
@suzyQ_darnit - Dear Suzy. The bars will all begin to have swinging doors at the entrance no doubt.
@baldmike2004 - Mike,
Okay, so we do a better job of seeing the potential wackos before they go get their guns. And then what? Do we single them out, give them special attention, what?
We can’t go all Minority Report on them, but there’s gotta be some kind of prevention method that would actually work.
They should ban selling of firearms. Period.
@The_Bodyguard@mancouch - I agreee.
Guns or any other weapons aren’t the problem. The issue is violence of all kinds and how it is romanticized or condoned (for emergency use only) in every media type popular today. We humans actually believe it can “settle the differences” or at least eliminate the opposition in our heavily ying-yanged and perversely diverse world.
It’s hard to value and appreciate life when you’re suffering, even from delusions.