2018 Los Angeles homicide roundup, Part 2

The Fourth of July smoke from the fireworks had just begun to settle when, shortly after midnight, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a disturbance in the neighborhood of Westlake.  

There had been a shooting at an apartment right outside of Belmont High School that left three teenagers dead.

The gruesome incident pushed this year’s homicide total in Westlake up to 11, the most for any Los Angeles neighborhood in 2018.

For this Part 2 of homicide counts across the city, we are taking a closer look at neighborhoods, and at the weapons used. Check out Part 1 here.

The Westlake neighborhood also ranks in the top five for homicides going back to 2010, with 95.

The majority of all killings across Los Angeles took place on the sidewalk or street, with only about 24 percent happening inside.

Handguns are by far the most commonly used weapon in homicides.

Over the past eight years, guns were the weapon used in 1,792 reports of criminal homicide. That’s more than double the total count for everything else, which is 669.

Here is a breakdown of the different types of firearms used:

And this is what we mean by “everything else:”

There were even more homicides reported just for handguns than the total of every other weapon over this time period.

For more information on gun crimes reported in Los Angeles, check out our piece from this summer.

Our data was found using the LAPD’s public database.