One dead, another injured in Montecito Heights shooting

One man was killed and a second critically wounded in a shooting Monday night near the 110 Freeway in Montecito Heights, police said.

Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Station were called at 7:30 p.m. to a report of shots fired at a homeless encampment along the northbound side of the 110 Freeway, police officials said.

At the encampment, which is situated on a bank of the Arroyo Seco near the Avenue 60 onramp, officers found two men with gunshot wounds, Det. Larry Burcher said. One man, believed to be in his 40s or 50s, was pronounced dead at the scene. The second was transported to a hospital in critical but stable condition.

Both men appeared to be homeless, Burcher said. He declined to identify the victim because his next of kin had yet to be notified.

The LAPD’s Northeast station recently issued a “community alert” regarding a spate of shootings in Highland Park, not far from the homeless encampment where the two men were shot Monday.

On Jan. 25, a father and daughter were shot inside their car at Avenue 50 and Milo Terrace. The daughter survived, but her father, identified as Miguel Angel Carachure, 68, was killed. Police say they’ve identified no motive for the shooting.

Two people were killed Jan. 18 in the northeast Los Angeles area, according to the Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s records. Gregorio Gomez, 28, was shot to death in an alley in the 600 block of Milwaukee Avenue in Highland Park. Irvin Fidel Ocampo Moreno was fatally shot in the 4500 block of Huntington Drive in Montecito Heights.

Burcher said there was no current indication that Monday’s killing was connected to these recent shootings.

California Highway Patrol officers cordoned off a lane of the 110 Freeway with flares, slowing traffic to a crawl, to accommodate an LAPD truck parked on the shoulder that was brought in to process the crime scene. Detectives and officers canvassed the encampment, their flashlights cutting through the gloom as they went from tent to tent, looking for witnesses to the shooting.

Coroner’s records show two men were killed in recent months on the same onramp: Jerry Cambero, 37, on Oct. 1, and Samuel James Gonzalez, 34, on Dec. 31. Both men were shot to death.