Gang Role Investigated in Youth’s Fatal Shooting

NORTHRIDGE — An unidentified youth was gunned down outside a fast-food restaurant in an incident under investigation as a possible gang-related killing, police said Wednesday.

The victim, described by police as a Latino male between 16 and 18 years old, died early Wednesday morning at Granada Hills Community Hospital from a single gunshot wound to the chest, said Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Broad. Police will try to identify the body through fingerprints taken during the autopsy, Broad said.

Witnesses described the suspect as an Asian male, 5 feet, 6 inches to 5 feet, 9 inches tall, and weighing between 140 to 150 pounds, according to police. The suspect fled in a mid-1980s blue Honda, Broad said.

The shooting took place shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday at a Taco Bell restaurant in the 9800 block of Balboa Boulevard near Lassen Street, police said. The victim was shot once by the suspect who stood with friends on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and fired into the parking lot, police said.

Both police and teen-agers, who described the fast-food restaurant as a gathering place for a local “posse,” said the shooting appeared to be gang-related.

“You have a youthful victim and a youthful suspect in an open-air shooting, the victim’s friends drive him to the hospital, dump him and run,” Broad said. “It has all the earmarks of a gang kind of shooting.”

“It was a set-up job,” said Paul Rizadpis, 18, who works next door at a gas station and often meets friends at the restaurant.

“I think this is where they met to brawl, and someone brought a gun,” said Masud Roshan, another teen-ager.

Rizadpis estimated that between 25 and 40 youths were at the restaurant at the time of the shooting, many of whom were questioned by police.

There have been no arrests in the shooting.

“We don’t know if they knew each other, who dropped the victim off at the hospital, the motive or a clear picture of the sequence of events,” Broad said.