Caught-on-Cam Shooting Halts Compton Youth Program

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The founder of a youth academy in Compton says the center may never reopen after children were forced to run for cover when gunmen opened fire right outside the building.

The LA City Wildcats Youth Academy has now been closed for five weeks, with founder Derrick Cooper saying it’s too dangerous to reopen the center at its current location. Efforts to restart the program, which serves more 40 children and has 57 others on a waiting list, have thus far been fruitless.

“It’s so traumatizing not knowing if a bullet’s going to hit a kid, if it’s going to hit a staff [member] or if it’s going to hit me,” Cooper said.

The shooting that prompted the closure happened while some 14 kids between 6 and 12 years old were at the center, Cooper said. Surveillance video showed children running away as the gunshots rang out, with gunmen seemingly firing at each other from opposite sides of the street.

None of the children or staffers were injured, but the shooters got away. Police are still searching for those involved.

Cooper said it’s too dangerous to reopen at the current location. He’s reached out to the city, county and community for help, but an online fundraiser to assist with relocation garnered only about $300, he said.

“You can’t say, ‘We’re about the children’ and when something like this happens, you don’t show up for the children,” Cooper said.

Cooper fears that without the program in Compton, the kids there will get into trouble on the streets or be left home alone.  

“Kids have to know that people care, and you don’t talk about it; you be about it. You don’t say it; you do it. And lastly, you show it,” he said.