Two Injured by Gunfire Marking Start of New Year

Los Angeles’ New Year’s Eve fusillade of sky-bound gunfire quieted to a relative calm in some areas, although the annual ritual remains intractable enough that at least two people were injured and more than 30 arrested for firing their weapons into the night sky.

The rat-a-tat-tat of gunshots that cut through the sky at midnight was a bare echo of the roar that reached a crescendo on New Year’s holidays of about a decade ago in some neighborhoods.

“It was nice and quiet last night, just random gunfire type stuff,” said one officer from the LAPD’s 77th Street Division in South-Central. “In the past, it was like ongoing war.”

Not all regions reported a decline, particularly those patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s stations said they received 649 calls of shots being fired, nearly double the number of a year ago. Two people sustained minor injuries, compared to three who were injured a year ago in the sheriff’s territories.

All 26 suspects arrested by deputies this year were booked on felony charges, evidence that authorities are sending a message that random gunfire will be dealt with harshly, said Deputy Elsa Avila, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department.

After reckless shooting caused several deaths in 1987 and 1988, officials launched an intensive campaign to curb the practice. This year, bus benches and television commercials proclaimed: “What goes up, will come down. Save a life. No gunfire this New Year’s Eve.”

Sgt. J.D. Allen of the LAPD’s Southeast Division said the ongoing public education campaign is finally paying off.

“There has been a drastic reduction in the amount of gunfire,” Allen said. “Mostly, people didn’t know how dangerous it is. Now, I think more of them know.”

Still, the hundreds of gunshot reports and dozens of arrests are an unsettling feature of the New Year’s holiday, as Roger LeBlanc of Valencia found out.

A little after midnight, LeBlanc returned from a New Year’s Eve party to find that a bullet from a large-caliber handgun had pierced the roof and a bedroom ceiling of his Valencia home and come to rest on the bed of his beagle.

“When I got home and turned on the lights, I noticed some acoustic material from the ceiling was on the blanket,” he said. “I looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling, and thought maybe there was something in the attic trying to gnaw its way down. But then I saw the actual bullet lying on the bed.”

After finding the bullet, he heard more gunshots ringing through the night air, LeBlanc said. “It really makes your heart race thinking about it,” he said, “especially when you open your door and go in your backyard and there’s still shooting going on.”

Times staff writers James Ricci and Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.