Tonight, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department continue to investigate the shooting death of 27 year-old Belizean American Yolanda Smith Major, a resident of Hawthorne, Southwestern California. Smith-Major was born in Chicago but grew up in Belize and attended Queen's Square Anglican and ACC before returning to the States ten years ago. She is the child of Mae Brown and is Education Minister Patrick Faber's first cousin.
According to investigators, last night at around 11 p.m., she drove to 10900 Block of South Hobarb Boulevard in Hawthorne – which is about 15 miles south of Los Angeles - where she was supposed to meet a man.
She was in the company of her 2 year-old daughter, a female friend and this man when an unknown vehicle drove up and opened fire on them.
Major was killed in front of her daughter, and the man she was meeting got injured in the attack. He had to be rushed to the hospital.
KTLA News in Los Angeles was on the scene this morning, and they filed this report:
KTLA NEWS
"Well we are following developing news out of South Los Angeles, we now know the identity of the mother who was shot and killed outside of her car late last night."
Second Anchor
"Yeah this is LA County Sheriff detectives trying to figure out exactly what led to the shooting. Eric Spillman is at the scene with the latest, Eric."
Eric Spillman
"This woman was shot and killed while she was standing in the street here and in her car was her two year old baby, two year old daughter just a few feet away from what had happened. Let me show you a photo of the woman who friends identify as 27 year old Yolanda Major of Hawthorne. Detectives say she drove here to Hobarb Blvd and 10900 S just before 11 last night. She brought her 2 year old daughter with her, left her in the car and was standing in the street right next to the car talking to a man that she came to meet. All of a sudden investigators say someone drove up in another car and opened fire, just gun fire everywhere. The man she was talking to was wounded and is expected to survive. Yolanda was killed instantly.
Now some of the bullets actually hit the car, the baby girl was sitting in the back seat, fortunately the child was not hurt, bullets shadowing the window and it also hit a wheel too, how horrible that this baby had to witness her Mom's murder. Detectives say they are pretty sure that this was some kind of a gang shooting, they say it's possible that the man Yolanda was talking to was meant to be the target and that she just happened to be in the wrong place. Neighbors tell us that in this neighborhood shootings are all too common. Pictures show how much gun fire there was, this is just one example a bullet that pierced the rear bumper of this pickup truck here. Friends tell us that Yolanda Major left behind three kids, she worked at at a convalescent home as a nurse. I asked one of the friends would anyone would want to kill her and the friend said there's no way that anyone would have wanted to kill her"
Smith major's parents are both Belizeans and she had been married to a Belizean man in the States.
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