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 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
Officers found the victims scattered rather than in one place. Three wounded adults lay apart from one another — in separate parking lots, with one near a bus stop bench. Video from the scene showed fire department personnel assisting one injured man, who was conscious, at the strip mall, MyNewsLA reported.
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 have not been identified.
Witnesses Describe an Argument Before the Shots
A group had gathered near the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue and got into an argument shortly before the shooting started, witnesses told KTLA. Police have not publicly confirmed what set off the violence, and the circumstances remain under investigation.
One neighborhood resident posted video on the Citizen app that captured the sound of multiple gunshots, ABC7 reported. Some accounts of the footage counted at least 10 shots in three separate bursts.
Shell Casings and a Towed Car
Daylight showed how much ammunition had been fired. Investigators working the scene recovered several 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 stayed closed while 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 September 28, four days after the shooting, no arrests had been announced, no suspects had been named and police had released no update on the victims’ conditions.
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.
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 case remains open, with the search for those responsible still underway.
