1 Killed, 3 Hurt in Fullerton Shooting

One Irvine teenager was fatally shot and three others wounded early Wednesday after they were chased into an upscale Fullerton neighborhood and trapped in a cul-de-sac by two carloads of armed assailants, police said.

Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Klein said that Russell Su, 18, of Irvine died at 9:25 a.m. at UCI Medical Center in Orange, nine hours after he and the others were shot. Su, who was shot once in the neck, and five others riding in three cars attempted to elude the gunmen but found no way to escape inside the country-club community.

Police said the three other victims are also young men from Irvine but refused to identify them or say if any are related. Klein said one youth was in critical condition at UCI with a bullet wound to the face, another was shot in the back and in serious condition at West Anaheim Medical Center, while the third victim was in serious condition at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo with bullet wounds to the shoulder, bicep and thigh.

Klein said investigators did not want to release the wounded teens’ identities for fear of attacks on their families. He said police did not know the motive for the shooting or if it was gang-related.

He said investigators believe all of the 15 shots at the scene were fired by the assailants, who were described by police as “an unknown number of male Asians 18 to 20 years old.” Klein said the assailants sped away in two compact cars, one light-colored and the other dark.

The investigation is complicated by the fact that the severity of the victims’ wounds has prevented them from being interviewed, said Klein. Two other people in the cars with the victims escaped unharmed, but Klein also refused to identify them.

“We don’t know if it’s a gang shooting, retaliation or a contract hit,” Klein said. “We still have a lot of unanswered questions. It’s a very complex investigation for now.”

Klein said no weapons were found in any of the three cars in which the victims were riding.

Still unanswered is why six teens from Irvine were in Fullerton in the early morning, Klein said. He added that detectives want to learn if the assailants and victims knew each other.

At the shooting scene, spent shell casings littered the 1800 block of Island Drive, which is lined with $500,000 homes in the middle of Los Coyotes Country Club.

Residents awoke about 12:35 a.m. to the unfamiliar sound of gunfire on their street. One house at the end of the cul-de-sac, where the victims tried to turn their cars around and escape their attackers, had a window pierced by a stray bullet.

There were five casings in the street in front of Maureen Redfield’s home. Redfield, whose backyard abuts the golf course, said she was in bed reading when she heard the first shots. She and her husband were the only ones home.

“I woke him up and told him I heard gunshots, but he didn’t believe me. . . . Some time later we heard a knock at the door, and I made him take the gun out of the safe. But it was the police wanting to know if anybody in our home was shot,” Redfield said.

Mohamed Gaffoor, whose house is at the end of the cul-de-sac, said he awoke to the sound of screeching tires. His wife and son were also asleep at the time.

“This is a very quiet neighborhood,” Gaffoor said. “I heard the tires and then a loud bang, followed by three or four gunshots.”

He said the bang was the sound of one of the victims’ cars snapping the mailbox in front of his house in a desperate attempt by the driver to turn around and escape.

Gaffoor was one of several residents who called police.

When authorities arrived at the scene, all of the cars involved in the attack were gone. A few minutes later, officials at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton notified police that they were treating four gunshot victims in the hospital’s emergency room.

Officers rushed to the hospital and found the victims’ three vehicles, two of which were struck by bullets, Klein said. The vehicles--a 1995 Toyota pickup, 1999 Honda and 1992 Lexus--were impounded. The victims were later transported to different hospitals.

According to police, the incident began about 12:30 a.m. at Emery Park, located a short distance from the shooting scene. The six victims were at the park when two carloads of attackers pulled up and shouting started, said Klein.

The attackers chased the victims up the twisting streets of the hilly neighborhood. Police theorize that the victims were unfamiliar with the area and inadvertently drove into the cul-de-sac.

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This story has been edited to reflect the following correction to the unpublished text: The victim’s name was incorrectly published as Russell Hsu.

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