The Canadian Press: Halloween slaying of boy, 5, highlights changes in South Los Angeles gang crime: "Arms flexed in a muscleman pose, Aaron Shannon Jr. was getting ready for a Halloween party while his grandfather snapped photos of him in a Spiderman costume.
Suddenly, the click of the camera lens was replaced by the pop, pop of gunfire and the 5-year-old boy was shot in the head and killed.
The Oct. 31 attack — blamed on misdirected gunfire from suspected Crips gang members raiding Bloods turf — harkened back to the carnage of the 1980s and early '90s when brazen young men patrolled the streets of the area once called South Central and gave little thought to living or dying.
Then, Aaron's death likely would have flared the Crips-Blood rivalry even further and been followed by a retaliation shooting, then another and so on.
'In the old days, this would have been a massive bloodbath,' said Guillermo Cespedes, head of the city's gang reduction program. 'An incident like this, even a couple of years ago, would have created many more days of violence.'"
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