Authorities announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl near a South Los Angeles hamburger restaurant over the weekend.
Hannah Bell’s mother, Samantha Mays is comforted by one of her sons during a news conference announcing a reward for information in Bell’s homicide. (Credit: KTLA)
During a news conference Monday morning, Hannah Bell’s family and members of the community urged witnesses to come forward with information and for the shooter to turn himself or herself in.
One community member led a brief chant saying “Enough is enough,” and called for an end to gun violence in the South L.A. neighborhood where the shooting occurred.
Bell was shot multiple times at close range about 9 p.m. Friday while at the check out line of Best Burger at Western Avenue and 78th Street, Detective Gabriel Ruiz said Monday. Her mother, Samantha Mays, was with her when the shooting occurred and held her in the ambulance. Bell eventually died at a hospital.
The shooter was described as wearing a hooded sweatshirt and was last seen running south on Western Avenue.
The motive behind the shooting remains unclear.
“I hope that this community will come out, show their anger, and their resentment, and denounce in the most fervent, way that this has to stop,” Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Peter Whittingham said. “This is not tolerated by anybody in this community.”
Hannah Bell is shown in an undated photo posted on a GoFundMe page on April 28, 2018.
“It was wrong to take my daughter, she was innocent,” Mays said to the shooter during the news conference. “Come forward. It’ll be easier on you to give in and take your punishment like you deserve.”
The victim’s cousin described Bell as being “the sweetest, most polite, most caring, loving person and member of our family.”
“Imagine for one second, for one minute, that it was your daughter, your cousin, one of your siblings that was taken,” the cousin said.
The victim’s oldest brother, Marquis Jones, said children and parents in South L.A. do not feel safe because of ongoing gun violence. He and other members of his family urged others in the community to come forward with information.
“I wouldn’t want this on my worse enemy, I wouldn’t want this on anybody,” Jones said.
Skipp Townsend, a community leader, said that children are hurting children in his neighborhood and offered his condolences to Bell’s family.
“No mother should ever, before mother’s day, be planning a funeral for her daughter,” Townsend said. “That is totally unnatural.”
Capt. Whittingham said he hopes justice will be swift in this case.
You don’t come into this community and shoot an innocent female and think you can get away with it. It will not happen,” Whittingham said. “It will only be a matter of time before the person responsible for this tragic senseless crime is brought to justice.”
from KTLA https://ift.tt/2rawMD8
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