Like a Movie — But Sadly, It Was Reality

When an act of violence occurs in Hollywood, people probably think it is probably a movie shoot at first. When a man actually ran amok on a public street, it produced the same reaction.

“I want to die!” screamed 26-year-old Tyler Brehm as he stood in the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, shooting randomly at people and cars. Panic would have been the immediate reaction in any other city, but the panic didn’t break out in the heart of Hollywood until later. Eyewitness Micah Williams, who was passing by with a friend, initially thought they were filming a movie scene. “Then the third bullet ricocheted right by our head and I was like, ‘Dude, they’re shooting at us,’” he said.

Witness Gregory Bojorquez reported, “At first it seemed like a movie, but then I heard the sound of the bullets hitting metal. It was bizarre, like something from a cop show. You get so used to seeing filming in LA that lots of people were watching it thinking it was for a film.” At the same time, and actually within hearing distance, a scene really was being filmed for the drama “Gangster Squad” starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone and Sean Penn. The real-life drama was also being filmed by a neighborhood resident from his apartment window as Brehm fired at least nine shots at passing cars and into the air before a nearby security guard reacted to the cry for help. By then, Brehm had run out of ammunition and was making a knife attack on a police officer when he was shot dead by the guard.

Initially, the event was only reported in local newspaper headlines because only one unidentified passing motorist driving a white Mercedes was reported to have sustained minor injuries.

Unfortunately, a shooting that results in just one fatality isn’t particularly newsworthy in Los Angeles. Except for the Los Angeles Times, other newspapers barely mentioned the incident. However, when the wounded motorist died of his injuries in the hospital and was identified as music producer John Atterberry, who was connected to the Spice Girls, even the press in New York picked up the story. Despite that, calls for more stringent gun control laws came only from outside the United States. The British newspaper The Guardian informed the citizens of Los Angeles that their city led the nation in gun-related murders with 1,257 shooting deaths, representing 69 percent of all homicides, but Angelenos instead took pride in the fact that 2009 had been 8 percent worse.