Shootings

The man accused of killing a soldier and wounding another outside a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark., pleaded not guilty Tuesday. Prosecutors charged Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a 23-year-old Muslim convert, with capital murder and 15 counts of engaging in a terrorist act in connection with Monday's shooting, which left Army Pvt. William Long, 23, dead, and Army Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, injured. Muhammad was ordered held without bail.

A Cudahy councilman and his brother escaped serious injury and perhaps worse Monday night when a gunman sprayed their sport utility vehicle with bullets in an apparent ambush, authorities said. The shooting occurred at Atlantic Boulevard and Slauson Avenue in Maywood, as Councilman Osvaldo Conde, 48, and his brother, Erik Conde, 28, pursued a car carrying a group of taggers who had just vandalized Osvaldo Conde's business.

One person was killed and four others were wounded in a shooting Wednesday at a dental office in Simi Valley. Paramedics and firefighters were delayed by about an hour in their attempts to treat the wounded because the gunman was still inside when they responded to the report of a shooting about 10:30 a.m. at Family Dental Care, said Bill Nash, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. The suspected shooter later surrendered at the scene and was under interrogation, said Sgt.

Police in San Diego County were searching Sunday for a suspect who shot an on-duty security officer twice on a light-rail train platform and then stole the officer's gun and ammunition before fleeing. The officer from San Diego Metropolitan Transit System was patrolling the Grossmont Trolley Station on Fletcher Parkway about 10:15 p.m. Saturday when he was approached by the suspect, who was carrying a semiautomatic pistol, according to a statement released by the La Mesa Police Department.

I looked into the woman's face. Her large brown eyes widened with fear. She winced in pain. Blood spurted from her thighs. I dropped my purse and knelt beside her on the asphalt. Reporters are trained to remain detached, to observe and record without interfering. But the circumstances that Saturday afternoon compelled me to reach out and help this stranger, the victim of a drive-by shooting in South Los Angeles. From that chance encounter, a bond would grow between us -- fleeting but powerful.

Not a day goes by that Mindy Finkelstein doesn't pause to remember the terrifying morning 10 years ago when a self-professed white supremacist went on a calculated rampage against Jews and ethnic minorities, killing a man and wounding others. "Every day, it crosses my mind," said Finkelstein, 26, who was shot in the right calf and thigh while working as a day-camp counselor at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. But speaking on Monday, 10 years after the incident, Finkelstein said she wanted this anniversary to be different.

It began, as mortal disputes sometimes do in South Los Angeles, over a girl. On one side were the Main Street Crips, one of the more muscular gangs in the neighborhood. Main Streeters commanded respect, if only because they had a bit of money to throw around, even their own small record label. On the other side were the Hoover Criminals. The Hoovers were big, with turf that stretched from Vernon Avenue down past Century Boulevard and into "the hundreds," as the streets are known locally.

The nation's busiest border crossing was closed and declared a crime scene Tuesday after at least two U.S. agents attempted to stop smugglers from speeding through the San Ysidro Port of Entry by firing their weapons at three vans loaded with suspected illegal immigrants. Port Director Oscar Preciado said it was the first time officials had shuttered the 24-lane border crossing to vehicular traffic since President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Three people in the vans suffered injuries and a person in a nearby car also was wounded in the unusually brazen smuggling attempt, U.S. authorities said.

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed four people in northwestern Pakistan late Thursday, intelligence officials said. The strike occurred near the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan tribal region close to the Afghan border, said two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. The border region provides Islamist militants with a haven from which they can stage attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Inglewood residents and community activists this week criticized city officials' decision to withhold from the public a report by an independent consultant who was hired to look into several controversial shootings in which police officers fatally wounded unarmed suspects. "Everybody is waiting and waiting to see what this report says," said Adrianne Sears, chairwoman of Inglewood's Citizen Police Oversight Commission, which has not been given a copy of the report. Tony Muhammad, an activist who has also pressed the City Council for the report, said the lack of transparency has led to "discomfort and distrust" among residents.