LA Mourns Slain High School Football Star

Mourners packed the funeral of a Los Angeles high school football star yesterday as police charged a gang member with capital murder in his death, the LA Times reports. The shooting of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw only three doors away from his home was the latest in a spate of killings that has shocked even Angelenos numbed by gang violence. Shaw's alleged killer,19, is a member of the Hispanic 18th Street Gang released from jail a day before the killing.

"That is what we are up against in this city, sociopaths like that who just got out of jail and within a day had a gun and in an instant took that young boy's life," said the city's police chief, who announced that a thousand new police officers are being hired to combat the problem. Shaw's mother, who was serving in Iraq when she learned of her son's murder,
compared gang members to the terrorists she fought overseas.