Aaron had run into the backyard of the home in the 1000 block of East 84th Street to show off his Spider-Man Halloween costume to his grandfather and uncle when two young men, who police say were gang members, began shooting from the alley.
Aaron was struck in the back of the head; his uncle was hit in the leg and his grandfather on the wrist. Aaron's grandfather told The Times he saw two men in their 20s walking in the alley behind the home.
He said he nodded to acknowledge them, then heard gunshots and saw a gunman point his weapon at him and other relatives. The neighborhood is an active gang area with many rivalries, though the family has no gang connections, police said.
The area near the killing is claimed by the Swans Bloods gang, and nearby rivals include the Kitchen Crip gang. Capt. Dennis Kato, who oversees the 77th Street Station, could not hide his emotions.
We should be angry, said Kato, his voice echoing disgust. We have failed as a community to provide that security for Aaron.
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Police ask anyone with information to call 77th Division Criminal Gang/Homicide detectives at 213-485-1383 . During non-business hours or on weekends, calls should be directed to 877-LAPD-24-7. Anyone wishing to remain anonymous should call Crimestoppers at 800-222-TIPS ( 800-222-8477) .
Tipsters may also contact Crimestoppers by texting to phone number 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S on most keypads) with a cellphone. All text messages should begin with the letters LAPD. Tipsters may also go to LAPDOnline.org, click on "webtips" and follow the prompts.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/75000-reward-considered-in-killing-of-5-year-old.html
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'Nothing can hurt Spider-Man' and then a deadly gunshot in South L.A.
Aaron Shannon Jr., 5, was killed on Halloween in an alleged gang reprisal. 'It's not going to stop,' his father says. 'This is the way people were brought up.'
By Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times
November 6, 2010
Aaron Shannon Jr. was a bumblebee last year for Halloween. His family didn't have much money for a new costume, but his grandfather figured no self-respecting 5-year-old boy could be a bumblebee two years in a row not this boy, anyway.
Bright and precocious, Aaron was treated like the mayor in his corner of South L.A. He shook so many hands and hugged so many teachers that it could take an hour just to pick him from up from school, where he had been in kindergarten for all of a few months. Adults marveled at his ability to hold his own in grownup conversations. He was an old soul and he was old-school often coming up with silky dance moves while singing along with the Temptations.
He was not a bumblebee, so his grandfather showed up with a Spider-Man costume on Sunday, Halloween. "I've never seen him so excited," 55-year-old William Shannon said.
Aaron tried it on, flexed his fake muscles and pretended to fire spider webs at his uncle. Then he dashed around the backyard of his house on East 84th Street. His grandfather tried to slow him down, but Aaron took a spill. He popped up, summoning as much bravery as he could, but soon whispered to his grandfather: "I hurt my hand."
"I told him: 'You'll be all right," William Shannon recalled. "'Nothing can hurt Spider-Man."
Twenty minutes later, Aaron was dead.
A bullet fired from the alley behind his house hit Aaron in the head. Aaron's uncle and grandfather were wounded.
On Friday, authorities announced the arrest of two alleged gang members in connection with the shooting. Marcus Denson, 18, and Leonard Hall Jr., 21 are both suspected members of the Kitchen Crips gang, Deputy Police Chief Pat Gannon said. Denson and Hall were booked on murder charges and were each being held on $1-million bond.
Gannon said the suspects crossed into a rival gang's territory looking for someone anyone to shoot as payback for a shooting earlier this year.
"They were not targeting any one individual," Gannon said. "These are violent people with no sense of how their violence affects other people, including a young, innocent boy."
Gannon said tips from the community led to the arrests including tips from gang members, which is unusual.
"Nobody absolutely nobody thinks this is acceptable in any possible way," Gannon said. Aaron's family has met his death with immense sadness, but also with another emotion that is all too common in this part of town a steely resignation that this is the way it's always been and the way it's always going to be.
"It's not going to stop," said Aaron's father, 25-year-old Aaron Shannon Sr., who is studying law enforcement at a trade school. "This is the way people were brought up. It's just their way of life."
Aaron's life had not been simple or easy. His mother, his grandfather said, had spent time in prison, and for a time Aaron was in foster care. A few years ago, he was about to move to Texas with his foster family; his family scrambled to intercede.
But in the last year, Aaron's life had stabilized and he seemed unfazed by any of the turmoil. He split his time between his grandfather's house in Compton, which was where he went to elementary school, and his great-grandmother's duplex on East 84th Street in South Los Angeles.
The duplex is cream-colored, with lace curtains hanging on the front windows and a little rock and succulent garden out front. It is around the corner from a carwash, a fish market and a pool hall and South Central Avenue, the dividing line between the territory claimed by two rival gangs, the Kitchen Crips and the Swan Bloods. It's a place that suffered decades of declines as jobs disappeared and gangs took root.
"If I could afford to move, I would," 78-year-old Mary Hall said Friday. She lives around the corner from the duplex where Aaron was shot, in the house she and her husband bought in 1956 after moving from Mississippi. Back then, the neighborhood felt safe. Now, she said, her 6-year-old great-grandson does all of his playing indoors.
Asked about the changes she has seen in the neighborhood, Hall called over her shoulder: "Oh, Lord."
From the street, many of the little stucco houses in the area, most topped with red-tile roofs and fronted by tidy yards, look deceptively peaceful. It's in the alleys behind the homes, though, where the gangs thrive.
Aaron's backyard, which has a clothesline and a lemon tree, has a chain-link fence at the back. Beyond that is a fetid alley full of dark, standing water, a shattered mirror and an old couch. The walls of the alley are coated with graffiti "playboy," "scrappy," "circle city."
Much has been made of the fact that crime has tumbled in the interior of the city. This will be the ninth year of a steady decline. In the LAPD's 77th Street Division, which patrols Aaron's neighborhood, homicides have dropped dramatically from 117 in 2002 to 44 in 2008.
But a single bullet has served as a splash of cold water in the face of anyone ready to celebrate a resurrection.
"Who's fooling who?" William Shannon, a supervisor of a school district equipment department, said. On Halloween, William Shannon arrived about 1:30 p.m. with Aaron's costume. The family had decided that the neighborhood was too dangerous for Aaron to trick-or-treat door-to-door. His grandfather, it was decided, would take him to a children's party at a friend's house in Inglewood.
The adults looked up and noticed two men walking through the alley. Shannon said he gave one of the men a sharp nod a common gesture in this neighborhood, which often means something like "I see you, you see me, and we're OK."
"Usually the guy would nod back, but I didn't get a response from him," Shannon said. He felt uneasy, he said, but then again: "I'm 55 years old. I wouldn't know a Kitchen Crip from the kitchen sink."
Suddenly, one of the men turned, looked the men straight in the face, raised a pistol from his side and started shooting.
Terrance Shannon, 27, William Shannon's oldest son, was shot in the right thigh. William Shannon was grazed in the arm. He assumed, he said, that Aaron was safe inside the house by then, and he ran to the side of the yard and vaulted over a fence. He made his way back to the front of the house and dashed inside. He heard screaming, and thought it was for him.
"I was getting ready to tell them: 'I'm OK,'" he said.
The screams were for Aaron. Someone had carried him inside; William Shannon found him on his back, his chest heaving, blood pooling around his body. He was still wearing his costume and his mask. Aaron died the next day.
The days after the shooting have been a dizzying blur of phone calls and appointments.
They have picked out Aaron's casket white, the only color that was available in his size. They have picked out a cemetery plot in Inglewood.
They had to pick suspects out of a photo lineup. Funds have been started to cover the cost of Aaron's funeral, which is scheduled to be held Nov. 12. They had to decide whether Aaron would donate organs; the family wound up donating his kidneys and pancreas.
"He'll live through someone else," Shannon said.
He said he believes, and must believe, that Aaron is in a better place.
"I'm happy with that," he said. "I'll be there myself one day. It could be 10 years. It could be 20 years. it could be tomorrow."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1106-halloween-shooting-20101106,0,4109350,print.story
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Community tips helped identify boy's alleged killers
November 5, 2010
South Los Angeles residents provided tips that led to the arrest of two gang members suspected in the fatal Halloween shooting of a 5-year-old boy, police said, drawing thanks from his family at a news conference Friday.
William Shannon, grandfather of Aaron Shannon Jr., thanked the community for "stepping up."
"It's not an easy thing to do in this community,'' the grandfather said as his son -- the victim's father -- stood nearby and wiped away tears.
Los Angeles police say that Aaron, wearing a Spiderman costume, was shot and killed when two gang members allegedly fired into the family's backyard on Halloween.
The suspects, Marcus Denson, 18, and Leonard Hall Jr., 21, apparently mistook the home as territory of a rival gang, said Deputy Chief Patrick Gannon of the Los Angeles Police Department.
At least one of the shots struck Aaron in the back of his head. His uncle was hit in the leg and his grandfather on the wrist.
Gannon called it a senseless act. "This incident not only shocked the conscience of every resident of the city, it also shocked the conscience of gang members," he said.
The LAPD received dozens of tips from residents, including calls from known gang members, Gannon said, allowing detectives to close in on the suspects in a timely fashion.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thanked the community for helping in the arrests.
"We will never be able to give back to this family what was taken from them,'' he said. "But we can say these two killers have been taken off the streets and will be brought to justice."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/community-tips-helped-identify-alleged-killers-in-halloween-shooting.html#more
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EDITORIAL
They killed a child
Five-year-old Aaron Shannon's slaying by suspected gang members was horrifying; progress is being made in fighting gangs, but there's much left to do.
November 6, 2010
In the hurly-burly of an election week, it would have been easy to overlook the death of one little boy in a gang shooting. Such deaths are not infrequent enough in Los Angeles to be considered unusual; too often, children living in tough neighborhoods are caught in the crossfire of the youths and adults warring around them.
But that's not what happened to 5-year-old Aaron Shannon Jr. Dressed in his Spider-Man costume for Halloween and showing it off to his grandfather and uncle in the family's backyard, he was, by all appearances, intentionally gunned down Sunday. It is a crime that is heinous even by Los Angeles' brutal gang warfare standards. Aaron's family, police said, is not connected with gangs, but lives in a neighborhood where tensions between rival gangs are always simmering. Police suspect that the two shooters, who entered an alley adjacent to the family's backyard, targeted the wrong house and the wrong family. But whether they were at the right house or the wrong house, there's no getting around the fact that they aimed at and shot a child.
Immediately after the shooting, two intensive efforts began in the neighborhood of the 1000 block of East 84th Street. One, by intervention workers, was to calm the community and prevent violent retaliation for the boy's death by rival gang members. The second to find his killers paid off when police arrested two suspects this week.
Until this homicide, recent news about gang violence in Los Angeles had been positive. Citywide, gang-related crime has been falling, and where the Summer Night Lights program was active, the reductions were particularly dramatic, with a 57% decrease in homicides. That program kept parks open after dark from July 4 to Labor Day; an audit found that residents made 710,000 visits to the program's 24 sites and that free meals were served to 10,929 people.
One crucial component to combating gangs is changing the culture in the neighborhoods where they operate. That includes building a trusting relationship between residents and the police and encouraging a willingness to cooperate with investigations and prosecutions. The mayor's gang czar, Guillermo Cespedes, says Summer Night Lights' real success is not in statistics but in community buy-in. In Aaron's case, the community rallied against the perpetrators, and even gang members cooperated with the investigation, police said, a sign of hope in an otherwise tragic situation.
The best programs cannot stop every random act of viciousness, and public safety is not only about catching criminals it is about stitching together neighborhoods that will not tolerate gang warfare. That's the work that continues.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-aaron-20101106,0,1391384,print.story
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