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A teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity said the receptionist burst into her room with a wounded arm. The teacher said she gathered up her students, who joined hands and evacuated from the building.

"You just kind of wonder where is a place that you're safe at?" asked Jack Bloom, who stood among a crowd of shaken parents outside the center, waiting to see their children emerge from the building. Bloom's son Scott is a 21-year-old counselor at the center's summer program.

Another parent, Richard Macales, stood reciting Hebrew psalms, a yarmulke on his head, while he waited for his two children, aged 2 and 3, to be led out of the building. "My feeling about it is it's another case of someone acting out in rage," he said. "I don't want to believe this is an act of anti-Semitism here in 1999."

As if addressing the gunman, LAPD spokesman Kalish told the crowd of reporters on the sidewalk across the street: "You can run, but you can't hide. It's only a matter of time."

But despite the tough talk, so far one lone gunman has evaded the largest police hunt this city has seen for a long time -- perhaps since O.J. Simpson's low-speed chase in 1994. The force included about 250 officers, including L.A.'s entire SWAT team, and a large contingent of FBI officers dispatched by Attorney General Janet Reno within hours of the shooting.

In the four months since 12 students and a teachers were massacred in Littleton, Colo., the summer has been marked by repeated shootings, the latest 10 days ago at two Atlanta day-trading centers, where Mark O. Barton killed nine people before shooting himself.

Among the culprits the pundits have pointed to these past months has been the movie industry. And Tuesday's events in the industry's hometown indeed unfolded like some low-grade crime film.

It was the latest attack on a quiet, middle-class neighborhood, where families buy homes with alarms and send their children to private schools: Littleton, Colo.; Conyers, Ga.; Wilmette, Ill.

That, perhaps, as well as the jolting familiarity of it all, brought an astonishingly rapid political response.

"Once again, our nation has been shaken and our hearts torn by an act of gun violence," President Clinton told reporters grimly outside the White House about three hours after the shooting. Then he grabbed the moment for a subtle hit at the National Rifle Association, saying the incident should "intensify our resolve to make America a safer place." Even before Clinton appeared, Vice President Al Gore had already offered FBI help to the overstretched Los Angeles police force.

Shortly after the shooting, both L.A. police Chief Bernard Parks and a stone-faced Mayor Richard Riordan rushed to the community center to meet parents and talk to reporters. "This is a sad day for the city of Los Angeles," Riordan said. An hour or so later, Gov. Gray Davis went on television from his Sacramento office to remind voters that he had just banned automatic rifle sales in California, effective Jan. 1, 2000.

Even a long-silent figure from the Los Angeles riots seven years ago -- former police Chief Daryl Gates -- spoke out Tuesday, telling MSNBC that somehow, no one much noticed the epidemic of gun violence when the victims were "blacks and gangs."
salon.com | August 11, 1999

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