At Miller Children's Hospital in Long Beach, Erica Miranda waits for her bandage to be changed. The 10-year-old was shot three times in the back, knee and hip while playing basketball outside her home in Compton in what police believe was a gang assault. A 17-year-old relative of her stepfather and a 45-year-old family friend were also shot three times and survived.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Jamiel Shaw Sr. kneels before his son's coffin. Standing, from left, are the victim's mother, Anitia Shaw, brother Thomas and aunt Althea Shaw. "To see my son lying there dead...in a casket...to be shot, slaughtered like a dog...it makes you want to go out there and just round up everybody that's in a gang and makes you want to be a crime fighter." On the same day as Jamiel "Jas" Shaw II's funeral, 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza was formally charged in the slaying.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Blood coats the floor and walls of a bathroom in Lancaster where a 14-year-old girl was shot. Local residents had decided to throw a party in a vacant home and charge an entry fee. The gunfire killed Dominique Peatry and left six others injured.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Miracle lifts her mother's leg as Rose Smith slides into her wheelchair. A bullet had just missed Miracle in the womb, and she was born addicted to her mother's pain medication. The family reserved stem cells from the umbilical cord in hopes that doctors may one day use them to help restore feeling in Smith's spine.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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In the days after Melody Ross was shot to death outside her high school's homecoming football game, there were candlelight vigils as well as bake sales to help raise money for the funeral. In Melody's honor, songs and raps were written and filmed and sent over the Internet. Thousands of mourners poured their emotions out on a memorial Web page, communicating with her as if she were reading their words.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Tori Rowles, center, flanked by her brother Forrest Rowles and friend Kat Mokry, watches her best friend be buried. Tori and Melody Ross, 16, were inseparable. They planned to go to college together and become fashion designers. Tori was standing next to Melody when she was hit by a stray bullet. "She was taken away by two gang people, and they had no idea how many people they hurt," Tori said. "They hurt other people and other people's family and friends and the whole community."
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Sambo Che, Melody Ross's uncle, explains the irony of his niece's slaying: "My family and I escaped from one killing field in Cambodia to land in another." Two 16-year-old gang members have been charged as adults in the slaying.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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A dove is released at the memorial for 5-year-old Aaron Jerel Shannon Jr., who was hit in the head by a stray bullet on Halloween. Aaron had been modeling his new Spider-Man costume in the backyard of his South Los Angeles home. The boy's father and grandfather, his primary caretakers, are seated at left. Nearly 400 people gathered at the City of Refuge Church in Gardena to mourn for Aaron.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Josue Hercules, 4, was playing with his sister outside their home in Los Angeles County when shots rang out. The children fled, but a bullet struck Josue in the back of the head. "Before the shooting, Josue was a calm boy," said his mother, Wendoly Andrade. Now, "he gets very angry...and fights with his siblings a lot."
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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From left, Josue, Katherine, Kevin, Kimberlin and Oscar share a one-bedroom apartment with their mother. Since the shooting, Josue, who is easily frightened, insists on sleeping next to Katherine. Police called Katherine a hero for carrying Josue's limp body inside the house after the shooting. The two have developed a strong bond since that day.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Josue's still stains the sidewalk as he and his sister Katherine wave to a passing ice cream truck. Upon seeing the stains, Josue has said to his mother, "A bad man shot me." For months following the shooting Katherine would draw pictures of her brother covered in blood.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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A wreath honoring Dannie Farber Jr. is given a prominent seat at the Narbonne High graduation ceremony. Farber, a wide receiver on the school's football team, died after he was shot three times while eating dinner in Compton, three weeks before graduation.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Rashaun Williams, 29, weeps with exhaustion after coming home for the first time since she was shot. Williams had recently moved from South Los Angeles to Lancaster to keep her 6-year-old daughter away from gang violence. She was visiting her mother in South L.A. when she was hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Pastor Wyman Jones of Sweet Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles carries a wooden cross through the Nickerson Gardens public housing complex to protest gang violence. Nickerson Gardens had seen a sustained lull in violence, but in 2009 and 2010 the area erupted once again, claiming the lives of at least six men.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Je'Don Lasley, a junior receiver at Los Angeles High, chokes up as he delivers a pre-game prayer in the Romans' locker room in the team's first home game since Jamiel 'Jas' Shaw Jr. was killed. Jas used to lead the prayers.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Edwin Cobbin, 17, was standing near his house in Hawthorne when two men drove up in an SUV, ordered him to empty his pockets and shot him several times. "Edwin was a good Christian boy. He loved God," his grandmother Helen Glee said. "He wasn't out there gangbanging."
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Miracle waves at her dad from the window. Her mother Rose Smith, paralyzed form the waist down by a gunshot wound, says, "Without Miracle, I don't know, I don't know if I could have made it through. She's a warrior just like her mom." Smith was three months pregnant when she was shot in the spine.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Derek Fender pulls over a suspected gang member while on patrol. In L.A. County, homicides fell by nearly one-fifth in the first half of 2010. But violence, especially gun violence, remains a plague.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Albert Cobbin, left, and his brother Maddox play near where their brother Edwin was killed just days earlier. Albert "is always talking about the guys that did it. And he is always talking about the police. 'When are the police going to catch him?' " their grandmother said. "We have to explain that to him the best we know how."
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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Jamiel Shaw Sr. and his son Thomas walk through the solemn halls of Inglewood Park Cemetery on what would have been Jas' 18th birthday. "I think my weakness is crying all the time thinking about him." Shaw said. "You can't be the same person anymore because Jas is what made me whole."
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times
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