A woman celebrating her 20th birthday and her older sister are among four people killed Sunday in what police in Inglewood, California, are describing as a targeted ambush.
Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton, 25, were shot to death at Stines’ birthday party, along with two other victims who have not been identified, according to ABC 7.
The women’s grieving mother, Tiffney — who asked The Los Angeles Times to only identify her by her first name — said of her daughters, “They both were outgoing, beautiful girls,” sitting beside a display of candles and two large photographs of them that had been placed on the sidewalk at the crime scene on the 1300 block on North Park Avenue. “They both had futures ahead of them, and to have it taken away,” she intoned, her voice trailing off.
“Can you imagine losing two kids at one time?” an unidentified friend of Tiffney asked a local CBS affiliate. “Come on now, this is what she’s here for. I’m gonna make sure her story gets heard.”
A surviving victim has been listed in critical condition — a man with an extensive criminal history and gang affiliation — per James T. Butts, the mayor of Inglewood, a small Los Angeles suburb. The other deceased victims have not been identified.
“This is the largest number of shooting victims that have been injured in this city since the 1990s,” Butts told reporters. “When I think about this and hear a crime like this anywhere in New York, in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, in Culver City, these are sociopathic killers that have to be sequestered from society.”
Butts reiterated that the attack was not random, and he urged the suspects to turn themselves in.
According to The Times‘ report, more than 40 rounds of ammunition were fired at the party, held at a home that was rented for the occasion from Airbnb. A neighbor who lives nearby said these kinds of shootings were not common in the neighborhood, which is just two miles away from the new SoFi Stadium set to host the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 13.
The crime rate in Inglewood has remained steady, despite the rising number of crimes in nearby Los Angeles. In 2021, there was only one more homicide in Inglewood than in 2020.
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