A man was shot and injured Monday on a bus in South L.A., a week after police announced homicide rates in the area had spiked.
Officials responded around 12:12 p.m. to reports that a man was shot on a bus near West 60th Street and Western Avenue, bordering South L.A.’s Chesterfield Square and Harvard Park neighborhoods, said Lt. Lester Trull with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Transit Services Bureau.
A man with a single gunshot wound was located and transported to the hospital where he was listed in stable condition, Trull said.
The victim was shot in the back and suffered internal injuries but was expected to survive, department spokesman Ramon Montenegro said. The man was in his 30s.
Two African-American men; one described as being 18 years old, the second man standing about 6 feet tall; were being sought in connection to the shooting, Trull said.
It was not known if the shooting was gang related or the result of an altercation, Montenegro said. Investigators were reviewing surveillance footage of the scene as of Monday evening.
Shootings on Metro bus’s are “rare,” transit sheriff’s deputies tweeted.
The incident occurred after a violent weekend in South L.A. that saw four late-night shootings and three deaths.
And last Monday, officials announced this year had seen a 7 percent jump in homicides compared to the same time period last year in the city, and August was the deadliest L.A. had seen in eight years.
Nearly half of the 39 killings in the city in August occurred in South L.A.