Boy, 11, Shot in Drive-By Is Near Death

An 11-year-old Carson boy shot in the head in a drive-by shooting was on life-support systems Thursday as his weeping father asked: “Why did this happen?�

“They’ve already told us his brain is dead,� said Frank Romero, 43, standing in the apartment where hours earlier his son Francisco (Frankie) Romero lay bleeding. “What a waste of life.�

Frankie Romero was shot about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday while he, his 22-year-old half-brother and some of his friends stood on the patio of the Romero home near the corner of 228th and Figueroa streets in Carson.

According to police and witnesses, five or six shots were fired at the group from a passing car, described as a late-model maroon sedan with four or five males inside.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said they believe the shooting might have resulted from an ongoing dispute between rival tagging crews, but that Frankie Romero was not involved in the graffiti scrawling and was an innocent bystander.

The other young men at the scene, including Frankie’s half-brother Bobby, who would not provide his last name, said they had no idea what prompted the shooting.

“They just pulled up and we saw them and started walking inside,� Bobby said. “Then we heard five or six shots, and the last shot hit my little brother. Frankie fell in the house and I fell on top of him. He started bleeding, and I thought he had just hit his head, but then the blood just started gushing out. He got hit right above the left eye.�

Frank Romero and Frankie’s mother, Hilda Magdalena Salas, 43, were both at work at the time, family members said.

Sheriff’s Department homicide Detective Tom Kerfoot said it is unclear whether any of the young men on the patio were intended targets. But investigators are certain the bullet that hit Frankie, an avid Little League baseball player who had just entered the seventh grade, was not intended for him.

The bullet lodged in Frankie’s brain stem, family members said. He was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and placed on life-support systems, but family members said they were told he is not expected to live.

Witnesses described the gunman as 17 to 20 years old, 275 to 300 pounds, with a shaved head, light complexion and dressed in a white T-shirt.