New Year's Morning Left 5 Dead in LA County

The year got started to the type bang no one wants to hear about. In the first early morning hours of 2009, at least five people were shot dead from Long Beach to Pomona to Los Angeles, the LA Times reports. Two people were killed outside a party in Long Beach when shots broke out before 12:40 a.m. Around the same time, officers were arriving to a call in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Panorama City where a man was reportedly firing shots and threatening his family at a party. Officers searched the residence, eventually finding him two hours later in the converted garage where they fatally shot him after he allegedly armed. At 3:45 a.m., a woman entered a police station to turn herself in for killing her husband in Pomona. About 15 minutes later in Studio City, a man was shot on the street outside a party. In 2008, LA had the lowest murder rate since 1969.