Shooting wounds teen girl

A teenage girl hanging out in a Costa Mesa neighborhood notorious for gang activity was injured Monday evening when a man approached her group of friends and opened fire, witnesses said.

The 15-year-old girl was with more than a dozen of her friends outside a home in the 700 block of Shalimar Drive at 6:13 p.m. when a man wearing a bandanna over his face approached them with a shotgun by his side and asked a question, witnesses said.

“He said, ‘Where you from?’ — then pulled out the gun and stood there for a minute. We all turned and ran,” one boy said. Witnesses requested anonymity for their safety.

She was taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana with non life-threatening injuries.

Witnesses said a car did a U-turn on Wallace Avenue and Shalimar Drive and stopped in the middle of the street. A man got out and ran over to the group of kids, who had just finished playing basketball, and asked them where they were from before shooting, another witness said.

Gang members in the neighborhood are known for hanging out in front of homes on Shalimar Drive. Apparently, the shooter guessed this teenage group was one of them, one witness said.

Though the girl did not live in the neighborhood, she was well-known as a jokester and as somewhat of a tomboy, but not a gang member, her friends said.

The man fired only once before leaving, police said. Witnesses said the man did not appear to target the girl, rather just the group as a whole. When everyone scattered, they said, she just happened to be near the back of the group.

“Everyone was running, screaming, crying,” said one woman who lives near where the shooting occurred.

Costa Mesa’s Shalimar neighborhood has been so riddled with gangs and crime over the years that only one street remains open to cars, police said. Other street exits are blocked with cement barriers.

Police suspect two men were involved, and gang detectives are investigating.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].