A double shooting outside of a Los Angeles County school left one teen dead and another wounded and now parents of students at the school are angry the district did not notify them of the gruesome crime scene in front of their children’s school.
The incident was reported in the 5000 block of Live Oak Street shortly before 12:30 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department stated in a news release.
Video from the scene showed a black canopy covering the victim’s body just hours before students were expected to arrive for class at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center in Cudahy on Monday.
“I wish they would’ve called the parents earlier, that they would’ve at least cancelled today,” a parent identified only as Javier told KTLA’s Sandra Mitchell. “This is not stuff that little kids should be seeing. This is not the first thing they should be concerned about in the morning, like, ‘Oh, there’s people that are dead in front of my school.’”
Nearly eight hours after the shooting was reported and authorities responded, the body of the teen was still on the ground as children as young as 5 years old walked into the school.
Parents also say they didn’t even receive a warning from officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District.
“There was really no alert to the parents. When it’s raining, we get alerts right away, but for a body, we didn’t really hear anything until eight o’clock in the morning,” parent Karla Lopez said.
Investigators with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department as well as L.A. school police were on the scene for several hours but have so far not released the identity of the victim.
The condition of the teen wounded by gunfire was not immediately known.
It was also a particularly deadly morning with four homicides within five miles of one another over a three-hour span. Investigators say they don’t believe the shootings are linked but could be gang related.
Neighbors in the area say they are not surprised.
“Obviously this gang related,” Javier said. “There’s tagging all over the city now and the police should take this serious, and things should be done about it.”
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn weighed in on the four shootings earlier in the afternoon, saying on X, formerly Twitter, that the shootings are “very troubling.”
“I have been in contact with the cities of Bell, Cudahy, and Huntington Park and offered any assistance we can provide,” Hahn added. “It is especially concerning how close two of these shootings were to schools.”
So far, there are no suspects in any of the shootings.