August 16, 2018 

City News Service 

 

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors renewed or reinstated rewards today in hopes of solving the 2016 killings of a teenage girl struck by a stray bullet in a gang-related shooting in Lynwood and two young fathers gunned down at a gas station in Compton.

 

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas recommended that the board extend the $20,000 reward — set to expire Aug. 20 — in the killing of 16-year-old Danah Rojo-Rivas, who was shot to death on Nov. 23, 2016.

 

Two residents have contributed additional funds to raise the reward to $30,000.

 

Danah was sitting in the back seat of her family’s Ford Mustang with her dog on her lap, riding home with her mother and 18-year-old brother from an evening function at the New Horizons Missionary Baptist Church. While the Mustang was stopped at a red light on eastbound Euclid Avenue at Long Beach Boulevard, the family was caught in the line of fire of a car-to-car shooting.

 

The intended victim, a passenger in a burgundy Saturn SUV, jumped out of the vehicle and ran behind the Mustang. The gunman continued to fire and a stray bullet pierced the rear of the Mustang and fatally struck the teen. Her mother and brother were not injured, but the family dog, a white poodle mix, bolted out of the car and was killed by oncoming traffic.

 

Ridley-Thomas also recommended re-establishing a $10,000 reward in the Compton shooting, which had expired Aug. 12, saying detectives believed it could help solve the crime.

 

About 9 p.m. on May 15, 2016, 24-year-old Richard Williams was driving out of a 76 gas station in the 1200 block of South Wilmington Avenue with two friends — 23-year-old Boston Farley and 26-year-old Brandon Upchurch — when someone fired into their vehicle.

 

Williams was struck by multiple rounds and died at the scene. Farley died at St. Francis Medical Center.

 

Upchurch, who escaped injury, told investigators that as Williams drove from the parking lot, an “armed male assailant was waiting on the sidewalk and began shooting into the vehicle,” according to the Sheriff's Information Bureau. “The suspect then got into a waiting white utility truck, which fled northbound on Wilmington Avenue and out of view.”

 

Sheriff’s officials said the victims, both residents of Compton, were not gang members, but their assailants could be.

 

The suspects’ truck was described as a white Chevrolet or GMC utility service truck with ladder racks and built-in side tool boxes.

 

Both victims were fathers of year-old sons and Williams, who worked as a communications company installer, was engaged to be married.

 

Ridley-Thomas urged anyone with more information on either of the shootings to call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS (8477). 

Category: Community