Bystander Is Killed in Gangs’ Cross-Fire : Crime: Woman is the latest statistic in Long Beach’s escalating homicide rate.

Sandra Jean Lacy was sitting in front of her mother’s apartment building in Long Beach, minding her own business, when she was caught in the cross-fire between two warring gang members, police said.

The gunfire from a semiautomatic rifle wielded by one gang member didn’t kill her, but a shotgun blast fired by another did, making Lacy the latest statistic in the beach city’s escalating homicide rate.

Lacy, 23, was sitting atop a brick planter late Tuesday night when a gang member, hiding in a nearby alley, fired 15 rounds from his semiautomatic rifle toward a member of a rival gang, police said.

The rival, armed with a shotgun, fired back.

“And being the marksman that he is, he hit the girl, dead center, instead,” homicide Detective Roy Hamand said.

The gunmen fled.

Lacy, wounded in the upper torso, collapsed while trying to climb the stairs to her mother’s apartment, Hamand said. She was pronounced dead early Wednesday morning at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

“It appears now that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Hamand said.

Lacy was the first victim in three days of shootings reported along the 1500 and 1600 blocks of Chestnut Avenue, where graffiti mars apartment buildings and bars protect windows.

On Tuesday, members of a Long Beach gang fired at the apartment of a rival who belongs to a Los Angeles gang, Hamand said. On Monday, police responded to reports of gunshots in the same area of Chestnut Avenue three times.

Officers said the shootings all appear to be gang-related. No arrests have been made.

“That’s a certain gang’s turf and you’re not going to get any cooperation,” Hamand said.

Gang-related shootings account for most of the killings in Long Beach, where homicides have soared this year. There have been 62 killings this year, compared to 42 for the same period last year, a 47% increase, according to police. A similar increase was recorded last year, when killings went up by 46% compared to 1988 figures, officers said.

Most of the killings have been in the downtown, central and western parts of the city, police said.

In the Chestnut Avenue area, residents and workers concerned about crime, congestion and litter recently formed the Washington Middle School Neighborhood Assn.

“It’s a great worry to us. We’re trying to get more attention focused on this area,” said Mary Soth, an association official and the executive director of the Long Beach Day Nursery in the 1500 block of Chestnut Avenue.

Soth said she and her staff hear gunshots near the nursery, which cares for about 80 children, at least once every couple of weeks.

“We’re nervous, but we feel we are safe. We are not personally threatened,” Soth said. “We’re not the targets.”