Stray Bullets Shatter Nerves at Mobile-Home Park in Pacoima

Residents of Pacoima’s Shelter Isle mobile-home park say they ask themselves two questions when they hear any kind of distant popping noise: Is a gun being fired? Will the bullet hit me or put a hole through my home?

The 250-home park off Glenoaks Boulevard and Pierce Street is being hit by what some residents say is becoming a weekend barrage of stray bullets. In the late night hours, especially over long holiday weekends, they say guns are aimlessly fired from a nearby hilltop and two public housing projects.

One elderly woman who lives alone in her trailer keeps a plastic cup next to the dinner plates in her cupboard to collect the bullets, one of which came through her kitchen ceiling and dug a notch in her new kitchen table.

Walls No Protection

The problem the mobile-home residents face is that the walls of their homes are no protection against stray bullets, which have pierced roofs and walls, ricocheting off furniture, shattering dishware and cracking bathtubs. The neatly tended park has spaces for older, single-width trailer homes that, unlike newer mobile homes, are built with thin metal walls.

Because residents cannot see who is firing the gun or pinpoint a location from which it is fired, on-the-spot enforcement of a city law prohibiting the discharge of arms is nearly impossible, police said.

A group of residents, several of whom said they are afraid to even sit still in their living rooms for fear of being hit by a stray bullet, have called a meeting with police next Wednesday. But even police awareness of the situation, they acknowledge, will probably not solve the problem.

“It’s a problem but there’s not a thing that can be done about it,” said Shelter Isle manager B. A. Smith. He said he thinks residents are overreacting to a spray of bullets last New Year’s Eve. “Those bullets can be coming from as far away as the foothills. Who knows? What the hell can you do about bullets coming out of the sky?”

Firing Called Traditional

Police said that New Year’s Eve has traditionally been a night when guns and rifles are fired into the air in the Pacoima area and in other sections of downtown and South-Central Los Angeles.

Both Smith and Shelter Isle residents, primarily senior citizens, said last New Year’s Eve was the worst they had experienced in the 23 years the park has been open. Residents said they fear that the gun firing may be turning into an ongoing problem.

“Every holiday, nearly every weekend, anytime people want to celebrate, we hear sounds like fireworks popping,” said Dixie Johnson. “We don’t know if they are bullets or what. But we’ve got holes in our carport after.”

The mobile-home residents point to two nearby public housing projects, Van Nuys Pierce Park Apartments and San Fernando Gardens, as the sources of the stray bullets. Police, however, said active crime-watch groups in the projects would have alerted them to ongoing random gun firing.

Police said they believe the shots could be coming from a section of undeveloped hillsides just east Whiteman Airport and north of Osborne Street. Shelter Isle is at the foot of the northern side of the hill area, part of which is developed with new housing and known as Hansen Hills.

Sgt. Gary Merrifield, who will be meeting with the mobile-home residents next week, said a .22-caliber slug can travel for more than a mile.

“If it’s fired upward it can travel more than that,” he said. “When it hits, it’s going to cause some damage.”

Merrifield said police haven’t been able to pinpoint where the bullets are coming from. “It appears somebody is partying or somebody has set up a target range in those hills and they haven’t used any common sense,” he said.

Police have offered to try to increase patrols in the hillside area, but Merrifield cautioned that “it’s going to be very difficult to give them any more patrols than they have been getting.” Currently, one cruiser is assigned to patrol about a 3-square-mile area where the mobile park is located.

Manager Cites Complaints

Rose Castaneda, manager of the 460-unit Pierce Park Apartments, said she frequently receives complaints from residents about random shootings toward the buildings, but she contends that the guns are specifically aimed at a section of project where drug dealers are known to loiter.

“On big holiday weekends I think people just go up to the hills and shoot just to shoot in the air,” Castaneda said. “And those poor people in the mobile homes aren’t protected by stucco apartments like our residents.” A group of about 30 Shelter Isle residents have collected handfuls of spent bullets--all sizes and shapes--to present to police next week as proof of their problem.

Johnson said she was asleep before midnight last New Year’s Eve when a bullet pierced her bedroom roof, struck her foot and then hit her dresser.

“I felt the particles of plaster fall on the covers and when I looked up I saw the hole in the ceiling,” she said. “I was afraid to look at my foot and I just yelled out to my husband, ‘Honey, honey, I’ve been shot.’ ”

Johnson said her foot was bruised. The incident has prompted her and her family to put their home up for sale.

“This could happen any day of the week,” she said.

One man said he put four ladders at the corners of his bed and then placed plywood boards on top for a canopy to protect him and his wife last New Year’s.

“We felt a lot better sleeping underneath the board,” said James Loven, 68. He said he would do it again on the Fourth of July and on nights when they hear what they believe to be gunshots.

“We cringe, yes, we cringe when we hear the shots,” Loven said. “These places are not built like a normal house.”

Rosemond Hargraves, 73, said she is afraid to go outside to work on the garden of her mobile home.

“I’ve got quite a few bullet holes around the house,” she said. “I think to myself, ‘My God, what if I am outside and someone shoots a bullet off?’ I wonder where it is going to land.”

Smith said some residents have overreacted to the bullet problem since last New Year’s Eve.

“We can really only point a finger at two days: New Year’s and Fourth of July,” and a few residents are circulating “fear stories” about the situation around the park, he said.