Tony Vera called after Venice311 tweeted the initial shots fired, and we scooped him up in our battle-axe truck and went to the scene. We were the first reporters to arrive, and the scene was tense. Tony hopped out of the truck when we turned the corner, didn’t even wait to park to get footage. His amazing video shows the scene start to finish, just 15 minutes after the shooting stopped.
UPDATES!
From LA Weekly:
A bloody shooting at Penmar Park yesterday shook east Venice.
Junior Diaz, one of two Venice teens who were murdered yesterday.
Of three teens who were hit around 4:10 p.m., friends on Twitter and comment boards identify the two fatalities as Junior Diaz and Alan Mateo, who they say were seniors at Venice Senior High School (located just one mile south of the park). LAPD Captain Gary Walters told LA Weekly reporter Dennis Romero at the crime scene that the third victim “will be fine.”
A girls’ softball game between two other L.A. high schools was set to begin at 4:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Walters said the Venice High teens had come to the field to celebrate their graduation.
The iconic VHS campus is best known as Rydell High from “Grease” and the classroom setting for Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” video — as well as the backdrop for “American History X.”
So, to memorialize its rich Hollywood history, campus authorities were planning a special 100th-anniversary movie night on Watson Field this Friday, followed by a weekend of shows, parades and other grad activities.
But Diaz and Mateo won’t be present for the ceremony or the celebration. One died at the scene yesterday, and the other at a nearby hospital. Says Maritza Escobar via Twitter:
Captain Walters told the Weekly yesterday that the shooting victims were hanging out at the field when an unidentified assailant walked up and fired at least nine shots from a 9mm handgun.
The teens had presumably just walked from Venice High to the park:
Marymount High School softball coach Dave Clark told the Weekly that his girls dropped to the ground when they heard the gunshots. He says another female coach at the field gave the first teen to die CPR for “10 to 15 minutes,” then wrapped her jacket around the non-fatal victim’s leg wound.
To the far right, you can see the young man who died at the scene — either Diaz or Mateo.
Captain Walters said the LAPD was treating the shooting as “gang-related.” Indeed, all gang detectives from the Pacific Division were at the scene.
But Frank Diaz, a man standing in as umpire for the girls’ softball team, said the victims “were pretty clean cut.” He said he didn’t think they were gangsters or thugs. Diaz and Mateo’s friends, in response to news reports, have taken to the Internet to defend the deceased. A Weekly commenter called Cypher508x says, “THESE 2 GUYS WHERE NOT GANG MEMBERS THEY WHERE MY FRIENDS.” And Twitter user Ally Klein writes:
Police believe the shooter may have fled in a silver Volkswagon. One teen softball player described him as a thin Latino guy with baggy pants, according to Patch.
UPDATE FROM LA TIMES: Two people killed in an apparent gang-related shooting Wednesday in a Venice park were sophomores at Venice High School, according to a memo sent to school staff Thursday morning.
A third victim shot in the leg and later treated at a hospital is a sophomore at Venice Skills Center, a vocational training school in Venice.
School police are beefing up patrols in the area, the memo also said.
According to police and eyewitnesses, a gunman shot the three victims, two of them fatally, shortly after 4 p.m. at Penmar Park in the 1300 block of East Lake Street in a quiet Venice neighborhood of single-family homes and shady trees.
The shooting erupted in a grassy area near a recreation center and a baseball diamond, an eyewitness said.
A witness who arrived at the park about the time of the shooting told The Times the attacker jumped into a car, perhaps a silver Volkswagen station wagon, where a driver was waiting and fled.
The shooting prompted officers to lock down the recreation center, where small children were playing, said Lt. Jeff Bert of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The children were later reunited with their parents. Bert said the shooting appeared to be gang related. Officers found several shell casings in the area.
From The Daily News: VENICE - At least five suspects were being sought today by Los Angeles police in the shooting deaths of two men in their late teens or early 20s and the wounding of another as they were watching a baseball game in Venice’s Penmar Park.
The Wednesday afternoon shootings were thought to be gang-related, an LAPD spokeswoman said.
The fatally wounded victims — 18 and 21 years old — reportedly were pronounced dead at the scene. The third victim is hospitalized with a leg wound.
Police were called to the park in the 1300 block of Lake Street just after 4 p.m. Wednesday.
A resident of the area, Brian McGuiness, said in a broadcast report that he saw the surviving victim run to the end of a baseball diamond before he collapsed near a fence.
Original Story: Two are dead and a third is wounded from a gang related shooting in Penmar Park. Witnesses said that a group of Hispanic males were talking and hanging out by the bleachers seemingly having fun. A few minutes later shots rang out, one of the men tried to flee and was shot in the leg, two others were shot in the chest. The two shot in the chest have died from their injuries. All are in their early 20′s.
Radio call from shooting at 4:10 p.m.
Police suspect this is gang related between Venice and Santa Monica gangs. Santa Monica PD was also at the scene for a few hrs.
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Thanks for the good coverage and photos, Alex. This is scary since my kids where just there yesterday afternoon. Never thought of Penmar as a bad scene.
All the more reason parents should attend mandated parenting classes so they can raise responsible productive individuals vs n’er-do-well punks and thugs.
A bad scene can be anywhere bad people are.
Left Venice in 2006, seems things don’t change
Arhata
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