Shooting reported near Santa Monica Pier; 1 person wounded

One person was taken to the hospital Wednesday evening with a non-life-threatening leg injury after they were shot in a parking lot of the Santa Monica Pier.

The Santa Monica Police Department was investigating the shooting and said in a tweet that it would release further information as it becomes available.

No other information was provided.

The pier and parking lot where the shooting occurred remain open.

Maya Nichols, 20, of Escondido was standing near Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. on the pier with her mother and friend when they heard the gunshot.

Nichols was in Los Angeles for a doctor’s appointment and had spent the night showing her friend, who was visiting from Portland, Ore., around the pier. They’d just finished taking pictures at the end of the pier and had walked back and ordered an Uber.

“I turned to my friend and said, ‘Was that a firework or a gunshot?’ and she said, ‘I think that was a firework,’ and then we actually saw people start running,” Nichols said.

For the first few moments after the gunshot, people seemed panicked, running away from the sound, Nichols said.

The three women were standing on the pier overlooking the parking lot where the shooting occurred, and Nichols’ mother told her that she noticed that a white car had been waiting in the parking lot and sped away after someone hopped inside after the shooting.

They saw a man limp away and heard that a group of people helped the man get up to the pier before he was loaded into an ambulance.

“It looked like it was kind of planned, honestly,” Nichols said. “I just kept waiting for more to happen. We literally didn’t move from where we were at.”