Shooting of L.A. Girl Prompts Reward Offer

In the wake of a surge in gang-related violence on the Eastside of Los Angeles, city officials announced a $25,000 reward Wednesday for information leading to a conviction in a recent shooting that left a 13-year-old girl in critical condition.

Elizabeth Tomas, who had just entered high school, was shot above the left eye--the bullet penetrating her brain--when gunfire erupted between rival gang members outside her house over the weekend. She remains at County-USC Medical Center.

“We are decent people, trying to make it,” said the girl’s father, Enrique Tomas, 47. “But this honestly tests our will to keep going.”

The reward announcement was made during a news conference on Pennsylvania Avenue in Boyle Heights in front of the girl’s house.

“The time has come for everybody to become involved, not only for Elizabeth and her family but for the whole community,” said Mayor James K. Hahn, who appeared alongside City Councilman Nick Pacheco. “A little girl should be safe in her own home.”

The shooting occurred about 3:40 p.m. Sunday, according to officials in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division.

Elizabeth had just taken a shower, family members said. She set a small mirror on a windowsill to apply makeup.

Outside, a man standing next to a car with a driver at the wheel suddenly exchanged gunfire with one or more people at an apartment complex across the street.

Of the dozen or so shots, a single bullet made a neat hole in the windowpane and struck Elizabeth.

She stumbled out of the bedroom with a blood-soaked towel and collapsed in the living room.

“I saw her coming out and she was saying, ‘I can’t see, I can’t see,’ ” said Jose Tomas, her 18-year-old brother.

Elizabeth had just finished her first week at Roosevelt High School, where Jose is a senior and sister Margarita, 15, is a sophomore.

“School was her pleasure,” said mother Juana Silva, 39. “She wanted to educate herself, to be someone.”

The family of eight lives in a three-bedroom house bought a year ago with two decades’ worth of savings.

“We are a family of peace who came to this country to work and get ahead,” said Javier Tomas, 21, the eldest of six children whose family emigrated from Mexico.

Police say the shooting was part of a rash of gang violence in the Hollenbeck area--mirroring similar outbreaks in other parts of the city.

So far this year, there have been 11 gang-related homicides in the Hollenbeck Division, officials said.

Among those incidents, on June 30 two people were fatally shot at a party on Prado Street. Last Sunday, before Elizabeth was wounded, one person was killed after two cars exchanged gunfire near 4th and Mott streets.

The news conference was attended by residents and activists who contend that authorities are not doing enough to address crime.

Jorge Sandoval, a 49-year-old resident, said politicians don’t come to the community until tragedies occur.

“They don’t do anything until children die,” he said.

Boyle Heights is riddled with gangs, whose eruptions of violence don’t necessarily follow obvious patterns, police say.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a gang war,” LAPD Capt. Paul Pesqueira of the Hollenbeck Division said about the rash of shootings.

But he said additional resources--including patrols from the Metro Division and the Central Bureau’s gang detail--have been assigned to the area.

Pesqueira declined to give other details about the shooting that wounded Elizabeth, to avoid compromising the investigation, he said.

“We need people to come forward,” he said. “This is a priority case for us.”