Police describe women's fatal melee - Brawl began as an argument about a man, then quickly escalated into violence.
A deadly and highly unusual melee among 30 young women in South Los Angeles was triggered by a dispute over a man who dated two of the female combatants, Los Angeles police said Tuesday.
Many of the women, while not gang members, had ties to men who belonged to gangs, police said. The two groups, authorities said, arranged to meet near Slauson and Western avenues to discuss the romantic triangle.
"The women associated with the rival groups went to the location to discuss it, but once there it quickly turned ugly," said Police Cmdr. Pat Gannon, who is in charge of the South Bureau homicide unit.
At the height of the confrontation, a woman from one group got into her convertible, screamed and rammed the vehicle into the crowd, police said. Shontae Treniece Blanche, 22, an expectant mother and part-time student at Cal State Northridge, was struck and killed. A second woman was critically injured.
On Tuesday, authorities announced that they had taken the driver into custody and booked her on suspicion of murder. According to police, the driver, Unique Kiana Bishop, 21, fled the scene but showed up at the 77th Street Division station with her mother. Police officials said Bishop told them that she struck the crowd by accident.
Bishop and the dead woman are from South Los Angeles but appear not to have known each other, police said. Bishop, who was on probation for a burglary conviction at the time of the incident, has been ordered held on $1-million bond.
According to police, the discussion about the man turned violent in a flash.
Gannon said "the discussion turned to yelling and soon the fists began to fly." Witnesses gave varying estimates of the number of women involved in the brawl, which took place in a gas station parking lot, with estimates ranging from 12 to 30 women fighting.
Blanche, Gannon said, went to the gas station with a friend and got involved in the argument. Then, Gannon said, Bishop got into her car and drove into the other group of women, killing Blanche and pinning another woman against another vehicle, injuring her critically. Although authorities initially feared that the injured woman would lose her leg, they said Tuesday that surgeons managed to save the limb.
Police, clarifying and expanding on initial accounts of the incident, said Blanche was trapped under Bishop's convertible after being struck. Gannon said the suspect, apparently trying to free Blanche's body from the car, "drove backward over her body, running over her . . . before speeding away."
