Two people were killed and six others were wounded at an after-party for the Hard Summer music festival in downtown Los Angeles early Monday, police said.
About 11 p.m. Sunday, a “big party” was shut down at a warehouse in the 1100 block of 14th Place after officers saw a person possibly armed with a gun go inside, said Los Angeles Police Officer Norma Eisenman. That person was arrested at the scene, she said.
The gathering had been promoted on social media as an unofficial after-party for Hard Summer, a house- and techno-music festival taking place over the weekend at Hollywood Park, next to SoFi Stadium.
A post for the after-party on Instagram listed several DJs who were expected to spin techno and house music.
Two people were killed and six people were wounded early Monday in a shooting in downtown Los Angeles.
(OnScene.TV)
About 1 a.m. Monday, officers were dispatched to the area again after reports of gunfire, Eisenman said, and they found eight people shot.
One man was declared dead at the scene, and seven others were taken to the hospital, where a woman died of her injuries.
No suspects have been identified, and an investigation is ongoing.
“This senseless violence and loss of life is devastating and those who are responsible must be held accountable,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement. “There will be no tolerance for violence in this city. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We will continue to work together to keep L.A. safe.”
A partygoer who did not want to be named out of fear of retaliation said it sounded like “100 shots” were fired outside the event, causing people to stampede out of the warehouse and scatter into the street.
Parties and other illegal activities have been a recurring problem in warehouses in downtown Los Angeles.
In May, hundreds of people showed up for an illegal rooftop concert spanning two parking lots downtown, with a group of them later spilling out into the surrounding neighborhood. At one point that night, vandals within the crowd began spray-painting an A Line train and pounding on the windows.
Paramedics transport a person injured in Monday morning’s shooting.
(OnScene.TV)
On Monday, the chaos that had overtaken the downtown industrial area overnight had calmed by midmorning as detectives scoured the area for evidence. Nearly 50 numbered yellow markers were on the ground, identifying the locations of pieces of evidence, including possible bullets or shell casings.
Family and friends of those who were shot gathered around a police cruiser where a medical examiner and officers placed an orange plastic bag containing items collected from their loved ones. The group of seven people wept as they peered into the bag filled with what appeared to be keys, pieces of fabric and other items they seemed to recognize.
A security guard who works nearby said the area has long been a destination for after-parties because of its location away from residential neighborhoods. Many partygoers affectionately refer to the events as “afters” and stay until early the next morning, he said.
Tyrone Laney, who lives in a temporary housing encampment around the corner from where the shooting occurred, said the partygoers returned an hour after police broke up their party around 11 p.m. Sunday. For hours, he said, he felt the thumping music through the sidewalk as the other encampment occupants slept. Sometime after 1 a.m., he and others heard quick-succession gunfire from what sounded like an automatic weapon, he said.
“It was pretty clear and loud. … You knew that if those bullets landed in somebody, that they weren’t walking away from the situation,” Laney said.
The police responded immediately, Laney said, and the block was quickly inundated with sirens, flashing lights and the whirring of helicopters hovering above.
“It just happened so fast. … I thought it might’ve been a drive-by or somebody rolled up on somebody that they were looking for,” Laney said.
The Hard Summer music festival, a weekend-long event featuring established and up-and-coming music acts, was first held in Los Angeles in 2007. A series of noise complaints from South Bay communities last year prompted organizers and Inglewood officials to mitigate sound levels this year, including changing where speakers were located at the venue.
Times staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
