People aren’t going out of state to buy them surreptitiously. As in years past, says George Tita, a criminology professor at UC Irvine who’s conducted research on black-market firearms sales for the RAND Corporation, “The illegal gun markets remain local. If you want a gun in this part of the city, you can usually get one, despite California’s strong gun laws. The homicide numbers only grow as you include more South L.A.
Times last year dubbed the South Vermont corridor “Death Alley.” According to the Times’s Homicide Report, the vast majority of homicides in these regions - and in most of the county - were the result of gunshots, which are an inescapable part of life for residents, whether or not they own a firearm. Add adjacent Vermont Vista and Manchester Square, and that figure climbs to 583 since 2000. More staggering is the number of homicides in those two neighborhoods since 2000: 363. County in the past 12 months: 14 dead in Westmont, 13 in Vermont Knolls.
neighborhoods of Westmont and Vermont Knolls together, those neighborhoods hold the distinction of having the highest homicide rate in L.A. The intersection is one block south of West Manchester Boulevard, which divides the South L.A. At one point, a woman arrived on foot and in tears, repeating a grief-stricken, barely audible refrain: “No, it can’t be.” The sounds of her cries were quieter only than the jets overhead bound for LAX. A 60ish man grumbled about the coroner’s tardiness (“He won’t be here till well after dark, I’m sure”) before noting that officers had left the body uncovered and exposed to the sun, the 85-degree heat, and a small flock of hungry seagulls. A business owner quipped about entry to his shop being blocked. It was a typical scene for the neighborhood: Bystanders speculated about the number of people dead. On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 10, a small crowd of mostly African-American and Latino onlookers gathered on the civilian side of police tape at South Vermont Avenue and West 88th Street in Los Angeles, where one person had been killed and three others wounded by gunfire earlier that day.
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