Families Reel in Wake of Senseless Shootings

Before Thanksgiving weekend was over, some of the very things two families had just given thanks for were gone -- taken from them suddenly, in torrents of street violence.

The families of a 19-year-old college student and a 43-year-old mother of three were reeling Sunday from the brutality of two separate drive-by shootings carried out by suspected gang members.

Nicole Williamson’s parents were in their Carson home early Saturday morning when they heard the gunfire. Her father walked outside and found Nicole bleeding to death in her car, where she had been listening to music with a friend.

A criminology student, Williamson had been returning to her old high school to help teach routines to members of the flag squad.

“She was just a girl,” said her father, Gregory Williamson.

In Hollywood, the husband and children of Rosalba Acosta were with her in the family truck Thursday when a bullet crashed through the rear windshield and struck her in the head. The 43-year-old stay-at-home mom had been driving her family home from a Thanksgiving dinner with friends.

Acosta had helped her husband start an auto repair business and was spending much of her time raising their youngest child, 3-year-old Andrew.

“Everything was working so good for us,” said her husband, Ruiz.

According to police, none of the victims had gang ties: Acosta’s slaying may have been a case of mistaken identity, and Williamson’s attackers were most likely gang members targeting a small group of boys who had been chatting with her on the street.

The assailants also shot Williamson’s friend Raynisha Bates in the torso multiple times. She was listed in stable condition.

The families, who had begun the weekend counting their blessings, found themselves trying Sunday to deal with the brutality and foolishness of the anonymous attackers, all of whom remained at large.

“It was probably one of those gang members,” Ruiz Acosta said. “They’ll shoot anybody, you know?”

The slayings came toward the end of a year that has seen the murder rate drop significantly across Los Angeles County, driven to a large degree by a 25% decrease in homicides in the city of Los Angeles. According to Los Angeles Police Department statistics, there were 442 homicides in the city through Nov. 22, compared with 590 by the same date in 2002.

But those numbers do little to assuage the grief of the two families.

“It’s a holiday weekend meant for families to get together, and then something like this happens -- there’s no reason for it,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mitch Loman, who is investigating the Carson shooting.

After a low-key Thanksgiving holiday with her parents and cousins, Nicole Williamson spent all day Friday shopping for Christmas gifts, her father said.

When he got home a little past midnight after watching the Lakers game at a sports bar, Gregory Williamson saw Nicole sitting in her car with her pal, Bates, listening to music. He thought to himself that maybe he should ask Nicole to come in, but decided to go inside, change, and come back out to get her.

“I heard gunshots, loud gunshots, like it was a big gun,” Williamson said, his voice breaking, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “I ran. I got to the car. There was blood coming from her head. I grabbed her and I held her. I told her, ‘Hang on! Hang on!’ ”

Nicole Williamson died in her father’s arms, looking in his eyes with a stricken, frightened look on her face, he said.

A student at Los Angeles Harbor College in her second year of studies toward a career in criminology, Williamson remained active at her alma mater, Gardena High School.

She was captain of the tall-flag squad while at Gardena and continued to volunteer as a tall-flag trainer after graduating in 2002.

“She always wanted to be a flag girl,” said Gregory Williamson, 44, a credit manager at a financial firm. “I took her to a football game once and she said, ‘Daddy, I want to do that.’ ”

Nicole was an only child who was doted on by her parents as she grew into a cheerful young woman. She spent her free time visiting with friends and working as an extra in Hollywood.

On Sunday, her father pressed his fingers against pictures of Williamson in uniforms and dresses, as her mother, Teresa, a 43-year-old dental-office manager, greeted friends and relatives in another room of their white-carpeted house.

“She had no enemies. There’s no reason in my mind that anyone would want to hurt her,” Gregory Williamson said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Gangs? She wasn’t in a gang.”

On Sunday, neighbors and well-wishers trickled in and out of the Williamson home on Sherman Drive, where trees on sidewalks are wrapped in shiny Christmas paper.

Relatives held a candlelight vigil Saturday night, and clusters of flowers, candles and T-shirts with messages inked on them were scattered on the sidewalk in front of Ambler Avenue Elementary School -- which Nicole Williamson had attended -- on the spot where she died.

“I don’t know what to do,” Gregory Williamson said.

Rosalba Acosta’s husband was at his home in Arleta on Sunday night with his family.

In a phone interview, he said he didn’t want to talk too much about the details of his wife’s shooting because it might upset his three children -- Liza, 22; Louis, 20; and Andrew, 3.

He said Rosalba had dedicated her life to raising the children as he worked 10- to 12-hour days at a tire shop.

The couple were childhood sweethearts who grew up in the same neighborhood in Culiacan, the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state. Ruiz Acosta came to L.A. looking for work in 1979, and she joined him a year later.

They built a solid, steady life together, and improvised in the face of adversity. When Ruiz Acosta’s employer of 22 years went out of business earlier this year, he opened his own business, L.A. Alignments and Tires, in Granada Hills. Rosalba was his gofer, secretary and business partner.

“We had a lot of goals for the future,” Ruiz said. “This is killing me, man. Everything was working our way.”

The shots were fired at the Acostas’ pickup truck in the 1200 block of North St. Andrews Place in Hollywood, a few blocks from the house where they had eaten Thanksgiving dinner.

Witnesses told police the shots were fired from a dark-blue, four-door Honda Accord with neon green side-panel lights. Anyone with information is asked to call the LAPD’s Hollywood Division at (213) 485-4302.

In the Carson shooting, sheriff’s detectives are looking for two or three male suspects who were in a dark-blue or black Nissan Altima or Toyota Camry. Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at (323) 890-5500.