LOS ANGELES - Residents in South Los Angeles reacted to the fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old suspected car thief with shock and anger Monday - and questioned whether it was justified.
Police fired 10 rounds into a car driven by Devin Brown after he led them on a 31Ú2-mile chase and then backed into their cruiser just before 4 a.m. Sunday.
Brown, an eighth-grader at a local magnet school for gifted youth, was pronounced dead at the scene. A 14-year-old passenger was arrested and booked on charges of grand auto theft.
Police initially called Brown, who was unarmed, a suspected gang member, but a spokeswoman said Monday that investigators couldn't immediately confirm a gang affiliation.
Friends and neighbors said the teen had recently begun skipping school and spending time with gang members after his father's death last year. They insisted, however, that he wasn't in a gang himself.
"It's a bad crowd he was starting to hang with but he wasn't a gang member yet - and I say yet," said Kevin Mitchell, a gang prevention specialist who knew Brown.
His problems notwithstanding, several people said they couldn't understand police opening fire on him.
"Just because kids hang out with these people it doesn't mean they're in gangs," said Antoinette Munns, whose son was friends with Brown.
"They can't pick and choose where they live," Munns, 41, said of children in the gang-ridden neighborhood.
Police declined to comment on the case beyond a printed statement that summarized the event and another that identified the officers involved in the shooting. They are nine-year veteran Steven Garcia, 31, who fired the shots, and six-year veteran, Dana Grant, 26. Both have been assigned to desk duty during the investigation.
