* Update @ 12:29 pm: LA Times reports one shooting suspect was being detained in connection with the shootings.
Northeast Division Capt. William Murphy said this morning that officers continue to search for suspects in the Sunday afternoon shootings in Echo Park and Glassell Park that left two men dead and one injured. Murphy said the shootings, which took place about 30 minutes apart, are most likely gang related but detectives are still trying to determine if they were connected. A black pick-up truck was reported at the scene of the shootings in both neighborhoods.
“We do believe it’s gang related but not exactly sure of the motive,” Murphy said.
The Sunday afternoon shooting spree began at about 5 p.m. when one man was shot and injured on Echo Park Avenue just south of Baxter Street following an argument, Murphy said. A second shooting followed moments later around the corner on the 1600 block of Baxter Street. That shooting left 38-year-old Eric Zamarripa dead, police told the LA Times.
About 30 minutes later, a man standing on his lawn on Toland Way in Glassell Park was shot and killed by another man on foot.
Murphy said that until Sunday’s violence the Northeast Division had reported only one murder, down from 10 during the same period last year.
Residents near the Echo Park shooting heard two blasts of gunfire on a relatively warm afternoon. Parents grabbed their children that had been playing in front yards and dragged them indoors as a large black pick-up truck raced west on Baxter Street.
“I thought it was fireworks at first and I stuck my head out my window and then realized it wasn’t,” said one resident of the gunfire. “It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Everyone was enjoying themselves.”
Later that evening neighbors watched as paramedics removed Zamarripa from his Baxter Street home in a stretcher.
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