MURDER! When Mexican occupy

The vast majority of the killings have been blamed by sheriff's officials on gangs.
Compton Records Its 68th Homicide
In the third killing this week, a teen allegedly stabs her sister. A minister vows to create a community task force and broker a gang truce.
By Megan Garvey
Times Staff Writer
December 15, 2005
A teenage girl allegedly stabbed to death her 15-year-old sister Wednesday morning on the edge of Compton, the third homicide this week in a city that has had at least 68 killings this year, far outpacing the rest of Southern California and its own recent homicide rates. The stabbing — apparently the result of a family dispute — took place shortly before 9 a.m. in the 14000 block of North Central Avenue. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrived to find the 17-year-old alleged assailant on the front lawn with her sister, Carmen Duncan, 15, who was fatally wounded, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies detained the suspect, whose name they have not released because she is a minor. They said she told investigators that she and her sister had been involved in a fight. The latest homicide came within days of two fatal shootings, one Tuesday night that killed Derrick Richard, 23, and left another man wounded. In another double shooting Sunday, Lubrina Pullard, 17, was killed and her boyfriend wounded as they sat in a parked car on a residential street. The rise in violence this year in Compton has been "absolutely incredible, absolutely too much death," said the Rev. Carl Washington, a former assemblyman who represented the area until forced out by term limits in 2003. "All around town today people are saying, 'Why are so many people dying in this city?' That's what we have to answer."In addition to the deaths reported within the city limits, at least nine other homicides have taken place in unincorporated areas just outside Compton. The vast majority of the killings have been blamed by sheriff's officials on gangs. Washington announced Wednesday that he intended to create a community task force to respond to the violence, including efforts to broker a truce among the city's many active street gangs. Washington, who helped mediate a gang truce in the early 1990s in Watts, said he believed that the time had come to try again.