SAN DIEGO -- City leaders pledged Thursday to halt a spate of violence in and around the Lincoln Park area, following a gang-related shooting that left two women dead at a liquor store early on New Year's Day.
As of mid-afternoon Thursday, San Diego police had developed "nothing significant" in terms of leads into the parking lot ambush, which also wounded a man and left an 8-year-old boy in critical condition, San Diego Police Department Lt. Mike Hurley said.
Slain in the 1 a.m. barrage of gunfire in the 5000 block of Logan Avenue were 45-year-old Carol Waites, who lived in the nearby Valencia Park district, and Sharon Burton, 32, of Temecula.
The victims were outside Dr. J's Liquor when the attackers arrived in at least one car, got out and fired as many as 50 shots, homicide Sgt. Jorge Duran said.
As the killers fled, one of the mortally wounded women staggered into the store and died. Medics took the other one to Scripps Mercy Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries a short time later.
Medics transported the wounded boy to Children's Hospital in Linda Vista, where he underwent surgery for life-threatening trauma and remained in an intensive-care unit.
The injured man was treated at UCSD Medical Center for a single gunshot and released.
Emergency crews found an unscathed toddler in a child safety seat in a car riddled with bullets.
At a news conference Thursday morning at the scene of the shooting, SDPD Chief David Bejarano and
Councilman Charles Lewis decried the assaults and others that have plagued the city's southeastern reaches lately.
"I'm upset, disgusted and hurt at the recent violence in the community," said Lewis, who took office last month.
He called on local law enforcement to come up with a plan to end the "senseless" spate of crimes, which included a shooting last March that killed two teens at the same site.
Five gang-related shootings have occurred in the general area over the last month, with four fatalities, including Wednesday's, the police chief told reporters.
"This community, this police department, will not tolerate this type of violence in our city," said Bejarano, who described the area involved as "for many years ... one of the safest (local) communities."
"We intend to keep this community one of the safest in San Diego," he added.
Hurley declined to discuss what might have motivated this week's shooting.
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