Karina Michel, 31

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Karina Michel, 31, a Latina woman, was killed while out to dinner with her family Tuesday, May 29, about 9 p.m. at 62nd and Main streets in LAPD’s Newton Division.

Michel, her commmon-law husband, and her two children, an 11-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, had stopped at a taco stand. But the children didn’t want to eat tacos. So Michel had taken them to a McDonalds nearby and returned to her husband, who was ordering tacos for the couple, according to the 11-year-old’s grandmother, who heard the story from the little girl. The family sat and ate at the taco stand briefly, but then, the little boy grew cold and went to wait in the car with his sister. Karina Michel was carrying their dinner to them, and had just set the family’s sodas on the hood of the car. She was reaching in her purse for the keys, when two black men or youths walked up, possibly with the intention to rob the mother.

The daughter later described to her grandmother what happened: Karina Michel was reaching to unlock the driver’s side door for her mother when there was an eruption of gunfire. The daughter saw her mother bloodied, and falling. The daughter ducked in the back of the car, pressing her little brother’s head down in the back seat for cover. Michel died at the scene. Afterward, Michel’s husband told the children to get out of the car on the street side so that they would not see their mother’s body at the curb. But the daughter saw anyway.

Michel was a legal secretary from South Gate, ‘a beautiful girl,’ the grandmother said, with auburn hair and freckles. Her husband was so distraught after the shooting that he required medical treatment. A $50,000 reward has been offered for information on the case. Anyone who was there or nearby is asked to call Det. Richard Arciniega at (323) 846-6556.