Family and friends are gathering Tuesday to remember the victims of a Halloween party shooting in Long Beach that left three people dead and nine others wounded.
The memorial service, in the form of a Buddhist ceremony, will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. at the home where the victims were shot, relatives said.
Da Heng, the homeowner and mother of one of the victims, described the scene when shots rang out.
“They start screaming and crying, and my son come over, ‘I got shot, I got shot.’ And I see everybody crying in my room, in the front door, bleeding everywhere,” Heng said.
One the home’s other owners, Chan Hou, said he was a long-time resident who had thought of the house as a “safe place.”
“Nothing bothers me, nothing happens. I don’t believe that … night there was going to be blood in my house. I love all of them. They all come to my house, they are all my sons, they are all my friends,” Hou said.
The shooting took place about 10:45 p.m. Oct. 29 in the 2700 block of East Seventh Street, according to the Long Beach Police Department.
The masked gunman jumped on top of the backyard wall in the alleyway next to the home and fired into the party, killing Maurice Poe, Jr., 25, Melvin Williams II, 35, and Ricardo Torres, 28.
Nine others – seven men and two women between the ages of 20 and 49 years old – were injured.
Police are still searching for the shooter, described only as a man in dark clothing.
A motive is not yet known, but police said there was no evidence to indicate it was gang-related.
Anyone with information about the incident can contact Detective Mark Mattia or Donald Collier at 562-570-7244.