Search On for Gunmen Who Killed 1-Year-Old Baby in Gang Attack

Authorities searched Wednesday for two men believed responsible for the shooting death of a year-old girl in Compton during a suspected gang attack.

Witnesses told sheriff’s investigators that the attack was carried out by two males in a dark sedan, said Deputy Tina Shrader. One of the attackers was reported to have done the shooting.

Detectives were trying to determine what prompted the shooting and whether it was related to a gang dispute, said Cmdr. Rod Kusch, who heads the sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau. The little girl was not the target of the attackers, he said.

One round hit the child in the head while she was in her crib inside a converted garage, according to the sheriff’s department.

A witness who declined to give her full name told the Los Angeles Times that she heard several gunshots followed by a woman screaming: “They shot my baby. They shot my baby.” The witness said she called 911 before walking outside, where she saw the baby’s sobbing father emerge from the garage with his daughter in his arms.

“Someone take my baby to the hospital,” the father said.

As fire department paramedics had not arrived, the responding sheriff’s deputies rushed the infant to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, Shrader said. She was pronounced dead at the hospital,

Deputies were dispatched at 6:58 p.m. Tuesday to the area of East San Marcus Street and North Holly Avenue in response to a report of several shots fired, said Sgt. Ulysses Cruz of the sheriff’s Compton station.

The coroner’s office did not immediately release the girl’s name, but The Times identified her as Autumn Johnson.

The site of Tuesday’s shooting, about a block from Roosevelt Elementary School, is one of the more violent neighborhoods in L.A. County, according to crime data compiled by The Times. In the last six months, Compton has had 475 violent crimes, including eight homicides, according to The Times’ database.

--City News Service, photo via Shutterstock