Watts Ca

It's an improbable place to find a home-building boom in the midst of Los Angeles' sluggish housing market. Yet only three blocks from the Imperial Courts public housing project, along a stretch of land once used as a neighborhood dump, 44 homes are rising in Watts within sight of its famous towers.

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of fatally shooting a man at a Watts housing complex as part of a gang feud that has left four men dead since Sunday, the mayor said Friday. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said that in the wake of the bloodshed, the city has tripled patrols in the Watts area, sent out dozens of gang intervention workers and held several community meetings to end the fighting between the Grape Street Crips and East Coast Crips.

Federal prosecutors Wednesday announced two grand jury indictments against 13 members of the Grape Street Crips, a street gang suspected of manufacturing and distributing large quantities of the drug PCP throughout Southern California.

Late one night in 2003, a body was found in a scorched minivan along a Watts riverbank. The remains lay blackened and twisted in the front seat. The only recognizable parts were a Mexican cowboy-style belt buckle, a bracelet and a wad of cash in the back pocket that had somehow been spared by the blaze. Los Angeles Police Det. Mark Hahn couldn't begin to identify the dead man, let alone figure out what happened to him.

Barbara Pritchett spent the anniversary of her son's death last week with her eyes closed. Ever since 15-year-old Dovon was gunned down on his way home from school last June, Pritchett had been dreading the day one year from his death. Except for an evening memorial, she had planned to spend it quietly.

Donna Foote spent a year at troubled Locke High School in Watts observing and documenting the workaday struggles of four new teachers. In her recently published book, "Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches With Teach For America," Foote delves into the lives of the teachers she met and reveals much about the high school.

It's so hot that the heat doesn't hang, it shimmers. And though Edgar Arceneaux tends toward the pragmatic, even he has to stop and question whether he's staring at a mirage.

Homicide detectives are investigating three suspected gang-related shootings that killed four people in the Watts area and Long Beach, authorities said Thursday. No arrests have been made in any of the cases. The first of the two Watts-area shootings, which occurred about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, claimed the life of a 47-year-old man whose name has not been released. He was shot while standing in a parking lot with a group of friends near East 88th Place and Central Avenue.

Over the years, Larry "Big Al" Jordan has experimented with a number of moneymaking schemes. He has peddled everything from cocaine to chocolate chip cookies, human hair to hiking boots. But none of his ventures -- or misadventures -- has generated the kind of cash flow and acclaim he now enjoys from the simple sale of T-shirts featuring the name of the neighborhood where he grew up: Watts.

A 15-year-old boy was killed and a man critically injured in a weekend shooting at the Nickerson Gardens public housing complex in Watts, police said Monday. Donta Bolden was taken Saturday night to St. Francis Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the chest, said Det. Roger Allen of the Los Angeles Police Department's South Bureau homicide unit. Ryan Alexander, 36, was in critical condition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Allen said.