2 Wounded in Drive-By Shooting at Gas Station

Two Los Angeles men were shot and wounded Tuesday morning in a gang-related drive-by shooting in front of a Westchester gas station near the intersection of Sepulveda Boulevard and Manchester Avenue, police said.

Joe Johnson Jr., 20, and Troy Kimble, 19, were walking along Sepulveda Boulevard about 10:50 a.m. when two men in a white car pulled up and yelled, “This is Rolling 60s,” the name of a Los Angeles gang, said Lt. Ron Dena of the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-gang unit.

As the pair tried to run to the Unocal 76 station, Kimble was shot once and Johnson suffered multiple gunshot wounds, according to Lt. Ron Moen of the LAPD’s Pacific Division.

Johnson was in critical but stable condition after surgery at UCLA Medical Center, Moen said. Kimble was in good condition at Daniel Freeman-Marina Hospital with a gunshot wound in the thigh, said a hospital spokeswoman.

Following the shooting, the assailants sped south on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Initially, the victims told police that they were shot in a robbery attempt as they stood at a bus stop in front of the gas station, according to Moen. The men also told police that Johnson was in the area job-hunting and that Kimble, a friend, had accompanied him.

“They later changed their story,” Moen said. “Now, I don’t know what they were doing over there.”

The manager of the gas station, who witnessed the shooting, said Kimble told him and other attendants that the assailants were gang members from nearby Westchester High School.