Brawl by Gangs Is Videotaped : Crime: Resident captures fight. Police hope tape will aid investigation.

A South Gate resident, awakened Sunday by a pre-dawn street fight, captured the melee between warring gang members on his home video camera and turned the tape over to police.

Three teen-agers suffered minor injuries--including one who was wounded by shotgun pellets--in the fracas that involved several rival gangs and broke out about 4 a.m. in the 2800 block of Ohio Avenue, South Gate police said.

With gang members using knives, broken bottles and guns, the fight escalated into a pitched battle, touching off a flurry of emergency calls from residents. By the time officers arrived, the gang members had fled, leaving behind only the wounded men who refused to cooperate with police, said Lt. Mike Blaska.

But investigators are hoping to use the videotape, taken by an unidentified resident, to track down the gang members.

“You can see a couple of vehicles. You can see someone on the film, and it looks like shooting,” Blaska said. “But it’s a bit shadowy.”

The poor quality of the videotape, filmed in the low light of early morning, could stymie investigators, Blaska said. But he added that South Gate police will ask the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab experts today to try to enhance the images. He praised the amateur photographer for taking the footage and giving it to police.

“We were elated that the person stepped forward and we are hoping we can use it,” Blaska said.

The names of the wounded teen-agers were not immediately released. Police identified them only as two 19-year-old men and a 17-year-old and said the three were taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood. One of them was hit by more than 50 shotgun pellets while the other two received cuts and bruises, police said. None of the injuries were described as life-threatening.

The South Gate videotape is only the latest example of a bystander shooting footage of an alleged crime or apparent police brutality.

A videotaped beating of a San Jose man last month led to the arrest of the man’s neighbor on hate crime and assault charges after copies of the tape were given to several television stations and to the San Jose Police Department.

On the tape, a 17-year-old boy is seen punching William Kiley, 42, as he watered a lawn on property he owned. Kiley, who is gay, had set up his video camera in his home across the street in anticipation of a confrontation with neighbors whom Kiley claimed had been harassing him for years.

Last Friday, a Ft. Worth police officer was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after a citizen videotaped him striking an auto theft suspect 28 times with his baton. Officer Edward James Parnell III had stopped by the side of a highway and pulled the suspect from the car after the man kicked out a rear window trying to escape.

A woman captured the beating on tape from a home near the highway and gave the tape to a television station.

Last March, in the most widely seen videotape of a police beating, an amateur photographer videotaped Los Angeles police officers striking Altadena motorist Rodney G. King with batons after a freeway chase. The King incident led to the indictment of four Los Angeles police officers and spawned investigations into the Police Department by the Police Commission and an independent panel.