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The streets were slick with rain in northwest Pasadena when Jamal Patterson went to watch “Monday Night Football” at his mother’s house last October.
The 24-year-old was sitting in a car with two other men across the street from his mother’s home after the game when someone shot into the car. Patterson usually sat on his mother’s front porch with his friends, but the recent rain made everything wet.
Patterson, a father of two, died three days later at Huntington Memorial Hospital.
One month later and one block over on Raymond Avenue, 13-year-old Iran Moreno was playing video games in his home when he was shot by someone who fired from the street. He was rushed to the same hospital as Patterson and died later that night.
“There’s always shooting, always gang violence around. They’re always hurting the most innocent people,” Iran’s cousin, Maria Balvaneda, said during a vigil at Villa Parke.
In Pasadena, shootings rose 22% between 2020 and 2021, from 60 to 73, according to the police department. Seven were killed in 2020 and six more last year.
The increase — part of a spike in homicides across Los Angeles County — has sparked grief, pain and outrage in a city marked by many upscale neighborhoods, as well as lower-income neighborhoods where crime has long been a problem, and some residents say city leaders are not doing enough to make conditions safer.
The shootings in Pasadena have been concentrated in the northwest part of the city, home to mostly Black and Latino residents. In response, city leaders and police have increased patrols in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the gun violence and have pledged to bolster after-school programs and invest in ShotSpotter technology.
Click here to read the full article at the LA Times
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