One person was killed and two others were wounded Friday in a vehicle-to-vehicle shooting in South Los Angeles, police said.
The attack took place in the 9300 block of Central Avenue about 3:10 a.m., said Los Angeles Police Lt. Clinton Dolman and Officer Matthew Ludwig.
“The three people were in a vehicle when another vehicle pulled up along side them and the occupants started firing into the vehicle,” Ludwig said.
“All three people, two men and a woman, were taken to a hospital, where one of the men was pronounced dead,” Ludwig added. The name of the victim, who was in his 20s, was withheld pending family notification.
The other two victims, a man and woman who are both between 20 and 30 years-old, remain hospitalized this morning, Ludwig said.
“We are looking for four male blacks in a white SUV that could be a Ford Explorer or a Chevrolet Tahoe,” Dolman said.
A motive for the shootings was not immediately determined.
Anyone with information on the shooting was asked to call the LAPD’s Southeast Division at (213) 972-7828. All tips can be made anonymously.
The shootings came the same week the Los Angeles Police Department is deploying additional Metro officers to areas with the highest rates of violent crime across the city, with many of them set to go to South Los Angeles, where gang violence has spiked in recent weeks.
The LAPD’s Metro officers are not stationed out of geographic police divisions, but are assigned as needed to areas based on the level of violent crime, Capt. Jeff Bert told City News Service.
“We deploy metropolitan division where violent crime has spiked, traditionally,” Bert said.
Bert said the officers are not necessarily there to respond to calls, but will serve as backup when needed, and they will also “engage community members, find out what people are afraid of and try to help them.”
Many of the 100 Metro officers being deployed citywide will likely be assigned to the South Los Angeles area where there has been a recent spike in killings, he said.
South Los Angeles neighborhoods — served by the LAPD’s South Bureau — saw 60 shootings in just the last two weeks of August, with 50 people hit and 15 people killed, Bert said.
Violent crime across the city has seen a jump, with Police Chief Charlie Beck reporting this week that as of Saturday, homicides in Los Angeles were up 7 percent to 185, compared with the same first eight months of last year.
About half of the 39 homicides in August occurred in South Los Angeles, according to LAPD officials. Beck has said that with gang crime up 15 percent, many of the killings appear to be driven by gang activity.
Bert said South Los Angeles is a major focus for extra police resources. In addition to the Metro officers, the South Bureau has set up a command post that will monitor criminal activity across each of its divisions, which are Southwest, 77th Street, Southeast and Harbor.
—Staff and wire reports