Los Angeles man dies after shooting

Eric Leake and Stephen Curran

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 | 9:33 a.m.

A 24-year-old Los Angeles man died early this morning after being shot in the head and left in an alley behind an apartment complex near Desert Inn Road and Maryland Parkway.

Metro Police found the man, whose name was not released this morning, about 11 p.m. Monday after responding to a call of shots fired in the 1100 block of Lisbon Avenue, near Sierra Vista Drive and Cambridge Avenue.

The wounded man was taken to University Medical Center's trauma unit in critical condition, but he died just after midnight, police said.

Police searched the area Monday night for suspects. An infant and the man's girlfriend in the car at the time of the shooting were not harmed.

"I can't think of nobody who would do something like this," said a woman who said she was the man's sister, but refused to give her name. Police interviewed her in the parking lot of a nearby 7-Eleven. The woman said she had repeatedly called her brother on his cell phone, but there was no answer.

A young couple walking by the gated apartment complex where the shooting occurred said they heard sirens and had wandered into the street from their apartment about half a block away.

"It's crack city in there," the man, who declined to be identified, said. "We try to avoid the area."

Several residents saw the crime, although few were willing to provide any information to officers who responded, police said.

Investigators pieced together a limited description of a possible suspect as a black man in his 20s wearing a blue plaid shirt. The man, police said, was more than six feet tall with a medium build.

Residents at the apartment complex where the shooting occurred refused to talk to the Sun.

The neighborhood in which the shooting occurred is in an area notorious for crime, according to Sun and police records. The Sierra Pointe Apartments at 1064 Sierra Vista Drive, about a block from the complex, has been a problem for years, attracting drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes, police and neighbors have said.

Anyone with information about Monday night's shooting can phone in an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers at 385-5555.