2011 Pulitzer Prize | Feature Photography

Jamiel Shaw Sr. kneels before his son’s coffin during funeral services. Standing, from left, are Jamiel Jr’s, mother, Anita Shaw; his brother, Thomas; and aunt Althea Shaw. ‘To see my son lying there dead in a casket to be shot, slaughtered like a dog it makes you want to go out there and just round up everybody that’s in a gang and makes you want to be a crime fighter.’ On the same day as Jas’ funeral, 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza was formally charged in the teens slaying.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Blood coats the floor and walls of a bathroom in Lancaster days after gunfire took the life of a 14-year-old girl. The gunfire killed Dominique Peatry and left six others injured.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Rose Smith was coming home from the market to prepare for a Memorial Day potluck. She heard gunshots outside her apartment in Watts Nickerson Gardens housing project and ran. She was reaching for the front door when she felt the bullets tear into her arm, her jaw, and her back. She was three months pregnant. Both she and the baby survived, but Smith will never walk again. She named the baby Miracle. In this photo, Miracle lifts her mother’s leg as Rose Smith slides into her wheelchair. The family had stem cells from Miracle’s umbilical cord reserved in hopes that doctors may one day use them to help restore feeling in Smith’s spine.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Sixteen years. Not long enough. Not long enough for Melody Ross to get her driver’s license. Nor to maneuver the perils and promise of high school, much less college. Melody was gunned down in front of her beloved Wilson High School in Long Beach after she and friends left the homecoming football game. An alleged gang member fired into a crowd. Within seconds Ross’ charming smile was stilled, 16 years and a month after her birth. That could have been the end of it. But the grief of family and close friends rippled outward, touching lives far from the streets of Long Beach. Melody was the daughter of a couple who escaped the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1980’s They wanted to come to America to give their children a safer environment. In this photo, students, facility, family and friends attend a candle light vigil at Wilson High School.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Tori Rowles, center, flanked by her brother Forrest Rowles and friend Kat Mokry, attends burial services. Tori and Melody, who planned to go to college together, were inseparable. They planned to be fashion designers. Tori was next to Melody when she was shot when they left a homecoming football game. ‘She was taken away by two gang people, and they had no idea how many people they hurt.’ Tori said. ‘They hurt other people and other people¹s family and friends and the whole community.’  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Two 16-year-old gang members have been charged as adults in connection with Melody Ross’ killing. Tom Love Vinson and Daivion Davis are each charged with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder after they allegedly opened fire into a crowd leaving Wilson High’s homecoming game. In this photo, Melody’s uncle Che stands over her casket.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

A dove is released at the recent memorial service for 5-year-old Aaron Jerel Shannon Jr., who died after he was shot in the head by a stray bullet on Halloween. Shannon had been modeling his new Spider-Man costume in the backyard of his South Los Angeles home. Aaron’s father and grandfather, his primary caretakers, are seated at left. Nearly 400 people gathered at the City of Refuge Church in Gardena to say goodbye to the boy.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

In Long Beach, amid the duplexes ad the shaggy palm trees, two different worlds were playing out. On the sidewalk in front of his house, 4 year-old Josue Hercules was playing with his sister. Down the street, a 46 year-old man with a history of gang activity and crime, according to police, got into an argument and pulled a gun. One of the bullets hit Josue in the back of the head, skirted his skull and lodged near his eye. Recovery has been uneven. Wendoly Andrade holds her son, Josue, at their home in Long Beach. After the shooting, Josue was in a coma for several days, fighting for his life.   (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Josue Hercules’ mother, Wendoly Andrade, says, ‘I do not know what will happen to my son’s life.’ Six months after the shooting, Josue’s father moved out, leaving his mother to balance Josue’s increased needs with those of her other four children. In this photo, from left, Josue, Katherine, Kevin, Kimberlin and Oscar share a one-bedroom apartment with their mother.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Blood from the shooting remains on the sidewalk where Josue and his sister Katherine wave to a passing ice cream truck. Upon seeing the stains, Josue has said to his mother, ‘A bad man shot me.’  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

A wreath honoring slain student Dannie Farber Jr. is given a prominent seat at the Narbonne High graduation ceremony. Farber, who played wide receiver on the schools football team, died after he was shot three times while eating dinner in Compton. He was three weeks from graduation when he was killed.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Rashaun Williams, 29, weeps with exhaustion after coming home for the first time after being shot and badly wounded by a stray bullet in South Los Angeles. Williams had recently moved from South L.A. to Lancaster to keep her 6-year-old daughter away from gang violence. But Williams returned to South Los Angeles to shop with her mother and was wounded during a gang-related drive-by shooting.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Pastor Wyman Jones of Sweet Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles carries a wooden cross through the Nickerson Gardens public housing complex to protest gang violence. Nickerson Gardens had seen a sustained lull in violence, but in 2009 and 2010 the area erupted once again, claiming the lives of at least six men. Police have said the violence was linked to a civil war of sorts within the Bounty Hunters, for years the dominant gang in Nickerson Gardens, apparently over drug sales.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Je’Don Lasley, a junior receiver at Los Angeles High, chokes up as he delivers a pre-game prayer in the Romans’ locker room in the teams first home game since Jas, Jamiel Shaw Jr., was killed. Jas used to lead the prayers. ‘I say whatever comes and hope we’re all right’ Lasley said.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Seventeen year-old Edwin Cobbin was lifting weights in the front yard of his house in Hawthorne when dark SUV pulled up. Two men got out, searched his pockets and asked him what gang he belonged to. Edwin told them he wasn’t in a gang, but the men shot him and drove away. ‘I am not okay,’ said his grandmother, Helen Glee. ‘None of us are.’ Loved ones mourn over Edwin’s casket at a public viewing.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Miracle waves at her dad from the window. ‘Without Miracle, I don’t know, I don’t know if I could have made it through.’ ‘She’s a warrior just like her mom.’ A bullet had just missed Miracle in the womb, and she was born addicted to her mother’s pain medication.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

In L.A. County homicides fell by nearly a fifth in the first half of 2010, but violence, especially gun violence, remains a plague. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Fender pulls over a suspected gang member during a patrol.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Edwin Cobbin’s younger brothers Albert, left, and Maddox play with toy weapons a few days after the slaying. Edwin Cobbin was lifting weights in the front yard of his house when a dark SUV pulled up. Two men got out, searched his pockets and asked him what gang he belonged to. Edwin told them he wasn’t in a gang, but the men shot him and drove away.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

During a visit to mark Jamiel ‘Jas’ Shaw II’s 18th birthday, Jamiel Sr. and Jas’ brother, Thomas, walk through the solemn halls of Inglewood Park Cemetery. Said Jamiel Shaw Sr. ‘I think my weakness is crying all the time thinking about him. You can’t be the same person anymore because Jas is what made me whole.’ Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, Jas’s Mother, adds, ‘When I was serving in Iraq, and I found out my son was murdered three doors from his house in Los Angeles, I was very upset. I was like, how can that be? The United States is supposed to be the safest place, especially for a child.’  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)