Dozens of partygoers arrived on an industrial street near where the 10 Freeway crosses the Los Angeles River shortly after midnight Monday.
Among them was Miah Banks, a 26-year-old stylist and mother of one from Azusa who eschewed her usual homely nature to ring in the kid moments of 2024.
“A lot of our friends were at the party and we weren’t planning on going,” said Lanise Harris, who accompanied Banks. “But we changed clothes and went in at 11:45.”
The women had partied to rap, R&B and TikTok hits blasting inside the warehouse and welcomed the new year with a customary countdown. But it was just before 1 a.m. and the party was over.
It wasn’t until they came outside that they heard the gunshots.
“I grabbed Miah, we took like four steps and then we fell to the ground,” Harris said. “The shooting continued until it stopped. “That’s when I got up and tried to pull Miah’s hand.”
“That’s what’s so tragic,” he said. “We were only there for an hour.”
Miah Banks plays with her daughter, Amani McGee.
(Cassandra Anderson)
Banks was one of 10 people wounded during a hail of gunfire after a party at an underground warehouse outside the Los Angeles Arts District. Two, Banks and Deven Whitaker, 24, died from their injuries.
Much of the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation. The Los Angeles Police Department described it as “an unknown dispute…between unknown persons” that sent revelers fleeing for their lives.
Los Angeles Police Detective. Justin Howarth, who is investigating the case, estimated that “several hundred people” attended the event, which was advertised on various online platforms.
“We believe the event was spread through social media,” Howarth said.
Surveillance video from the scene at the time shows cars double-parked along the potholed stretch of Porter Street between Mateo Street and South Santa Fe Avenue. Several warehouses are visible, some with vacancy signs, as well as a pallet wholesale company and a tire service shop.
Banks was a homebody “who rarely went out,” said Cassandra Anderson, 47, a family friend who organized an online funeral fundraiser.
“She doesn’t really party,” said Anderson, who was in Las Vegas when he first heard about the shooting Monday morning. “When she goes out, it is usually on trips to Cancun for her birthday, otherwise she is at home with her daughter or her friends.”
Banks and Harris, 25, met in high school. They had seen a flyer for the event, but initially decided to stay at Harris’ house, at least until his phones started ringing with social media and text messages around 10 p.m.
Upon arrival, Harris called the party “overwhelming,” noting that the size of the crowd easily dwarfed the building’s listed capacity of 200 people. Organizers charged entry fees of $50 for men and $40 for women, but Harris said a friend got her and Banks in. free.
“They were letting anyone in,” he said, “and I saw a group of people I didn’t recognize.”
The two danced and celebrated until it was announced at 12:54 a.m. that the “party was over,” Harris said. Then they came out and shots were heard.
Banks was hit in the neck and Harris applied pressure to the wound while they waited for paramedics to arrive.
Harris said she talked to her injured friend for 30 minutes until Banks fell unconscious. First responders arrived 10 minutes after that, Harris said.
Paramedics attempted to revive Banks. But there was nothing they could do at the time, said Harris, who believed her “friend would still be alive” if she had received quicker care.
“I can’t believe she died because I was talking to her,” Harris said. “At no time did I think she was going to die.”
Harris herself was shot in the hand, but that wound will heal with time. It is the emotional trauma that will leave the deepest scar.
Banks, Harris said, was “the perfect friend.”
Harris said the party was one of a few in the area and she was surprised police weren’t around.
“Usually when there are hundreds of black people around, the police are nearby,” he said.
A legal party was taking place a block from the illegal rave, Howarth said.
That event had private security for an estimated crowd of 800 people, according to one of its organizers. Some attendees removed themselves from the line of fire as they returned to their cars.
“These types of illegal parties give legitimate parties a bad reputation,” said the organizer, who asked that his name and that of his event not be disclosed for fear of loss of income. “This is the kind of thing that ruins businesses.”
Howarth said he could not release information about the suspects or their motives, citing the ongoing investigation.
He said he did not know the number of parties usually held in the area, but that events were expected for the holidays.
For Anderson, a family friend of the Banks, the shooting death was a tragic case of “the wrong person at the wrong time.”
“She was very focused on her family and once she gets out, this happens,” she said. “Is hard to understand”.
