Four people were wounded — at least three of them struck by bullets — when gunfire erupted at a small shopping plaza in Hawthorne, California, early Thursday, September 24, 2026. Officers from three police departments converged on a darkened stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard, but the shooter or shooters had already fled.
A Hawthorne Police Department spokesperson said the report reached police around 2:13 a.m. on Crenshaw Boulevard’s 14100 block. A caller had described gunshots and screaming in the area, a commercial pocket of Los Angeles County’s South Bay region lined with storefronts and parking lots, and the call touched off a large, multi-agency emergency response.
Victims Found Across Separate Parking Lots
What officers found was scattered rather than contained. Three wounded adults lay apart from one another — in separate parking lots, with one near a bus stop bench. At least one of them appeared to be conscious as first responders lifted the person onto a stretcher. Video shot at the strip mall showed firefighters and paramedics crouched over an injured man.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department treated three of the victims — two men and a woman — at the scene before taking them to local hospitals. The fourth, a man, made his own way to a hospital and was identified there afterward, police said. Police said all four escaped with non-life-threatening injuries. The victims were described only as three men and a woman.
Witnesses Describe an Argument Before the Shots
According to witnesses, a group had gathered near the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue and fell into an argument shortly before the shooting started. Investigators had not publicly confirmed what set off the violence as of Thursday morning, and the circumstances remained under investigation.
One neighborhood resident posted video on the Citizen app that captured the sound of the attack. Screams can be heard, along with at least three distinct bursts of gunfire, and at least 10 shots can be counted across roughly a minute of the footage.
Shell Casings and a Towed Car
How much ammunition had been fired became clearer in daylight. Investigators working the scene recovered a number of spent shell casings strewn across the roadway. Officers also searched a car parked in the lot before having it towed for evidence.
Police shut Crenshaw Boulevard between Rosecrans Avenue and El Segundo Boulevard on Thursday morning as the Hawthorne Police Department pressed on with its investigation, closing off a busy north-south artery through the area. Several nearby businesses would stay closed for as long as officers remained on scene.
Hawthorne’s own force was far from alone in responding. Officers from the Gardena and Hermosa Beach police departments turned out at the plaza alongside county firefighters and paramedics. Police confirmed that no officer fired a weapon during the incident.
No Arrests and No Suspect Description
Hawthorne police said whoever opened fire was gone before the first patrol cars pulled up, and the department has not said how many people may have been involved. It has released no descriptions of anyone being sought.
As of Thursday morning, no arrests had been announced and nobody had been taken into custody.
Wedged between Inglewood and the beach cities, Hawthorne covers roughly 6 square miles and sits along one of the South Bay’s main commercial corridors. The intersection where the shooting happened doubles as a transit stop and a shopping destination — a detail underscored by the bus bench where one of the wounded was found. The plaza’s businesses would have been closed at that hour, leaving the parking lots and the sidewalk outside them as the scene of the gunfire.
So far, investigators have offered no account of who fired the shots or why, and police have not confirmed the witness descriptions of an argument beforehand. The department was still working the case Thursday morning, with the search for those responsible open and the block of Crenshaw Boulevard where the shooting happened closed to traffic.
