Shots Fired Again in Pico Neighborhood

By Jorge Casuso

June 5 -- After a two-week lull, gunfire rang out once again in the Pico Neighborhood Thursday in what appears to be a gang-related drive-by shooting, police said. No one was injured.

The shots were fired at around 12:30 p.m. from a black sports utility vehicle occupied by two young black men heading eastbound on Delaware Avenue near 22nd Street.

The shots struck a parked vehicle occupied by two young Hispanic men, as well as a neighboring unoccupied vehicle.

“Some of the victims and witnesses are affiliated with a Santa Monica Street Gang,” said Lt. P.J. Guido, who heads the department’s Youth Services Division.

A bicycle officer stationed at nearby Virginia Park responded to the scene within minutes, Guido said.

One of the suspects was described as a 20-year-old black man wearing a gray baseball cap with a black brim. There was no description for the second suspect.

The shooting comes two weeks after shots were fired on May 18, 19 and 20, leading to a police crackdown that resulted in six arrests. No one was injured in the shootings.

On May 9, two shots were fired, one of them piercing the window of a bedroom of an affordable housing project where children were asleep.

The suspects arrested in the recent string of shootings were either violating their probation or wanted on outstanding warrants, police said.