LOS ANGELES — Four people were killed and one person was wounded in a shooting at a home in Inglewood early Sunday, in what the mayor called the worst act of violence in the city in years.
Firefighters and paramedics were dispatched at 1:43 a.m. to the 1300 block of Park Avenue, according to a county fire department dispatcher. Officials said they don’t know the motive for the shooting and said they are looking for suspects.
During a morning news conference, Inglewood Mayor James Butts said multiple weapons were used, including one assault rifle and one handgun. The victims appear to have been targeted, he added.
“When I think about this and hear a crime like this anywhere in New York, in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, in Culver City, these are sociopathic killers that have to be sequestered from society,” Butts told reporters at a morning press conference.
There were a total of five gunshot victims and three were pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles Fire Department told KNBC-TV Channel 4. Paramedics rushed two others to a hospital.
The killings come amid a two-year rise in homicides across Los Angeles County — and other places across the country — that has been met with alarm.
The city of Los Angeles saw nearly 400 killings at the end of 2021, marking the most homicides of any year since 2007. Young Latino and Black men continue to be overrepresented among the dead, data show.
An analysis by the Los Angeles Times of killings in L.A. County through the first 11 months of 2021 showed sharp increases in neighborhoods such as Watts and adjoining Florence-Firestone, which each had more than 20 killings, and in other cities in the broader L.A. region, including Compton and Long Beach, which each had more than 30.
Inglewood had not seen the same spike in killing in 2021 as some neighboring areas.
According to The Times data from January through November 2021, the city recorded 13 homicides, just one more than during the same period in 2020. More recent data was not immediately available.
Inglewood has been in the midst of a major revitalization in recent years, centered around the new SoFi Stadium, which will host the Super Bowl next month.
