By the time I reached South-Central last Thursday, it was a hopscotch of smoldering buildings. As I drove down Normandie for 50 blocks, every major intersection glistened with broken glass. Stores were hung with signs saying BLACK-OWNED, DON’T BURN. Burglar alarms rang, the whines of fire engines could be heard and the smoke got thicker with each block. Firefighters with police escorts fought blazes in some buildings while others burned on for want of anyone to deal with them. At Florence, an auto-repair shop was gutted, a dozen burned-out cars sitting in its lot. The liquor store was in ruins, its shelves bare. There were splotches of dried blood on the street where white motorists had been dragged from their cars and beaten.

When I arrived at Wanda Mitchell’s home, in the 5000 block of Normandie, the shades were drawn and the door leading to her porch was closed. Though I had called her that morning and she had assured me she was safe, I could see why my friend had decided to flee. At the corner of 51st Street, another liquor store had been looted; there was glass all over the street. Wanda had given me a second number to call, so I walked toward a pay phone outside Los Amigos Market. But before I could get there, a group of young men and women, black and Hispanic, started to break down the front door. Several black men jumped out of a passing pickup truck and joined in. Carrying canned goods, candy and whatever else they could find, the looters scurried off. Some of them smashed a stamp machine onto the sidewalk to get at the coins. There was not a cop in sight.

It turned out that Wanda had left an hour before I arrived and was staying with family in the relative safety of nearby Ladera Heights. She had been up all night after the King verdict, listening to her neighbors complain about injustice. Then trouble flared up nearby. “People went crazy, and it’s been like that ever since,” she said.

Violence became contagious. One teenager urged a group to break into Gee Gee’s Liquor store, across the street from Wanda’s apartment. She could hear them smashing the windows and prying open the metal gate with a hammer. Once they were in, passersby stopped for a share of the spoils. Some of the looters seemed to be looking for targets of opportunity. They were black and Hispanic, men and women, even children brought by their mothers. Motorists drove by, signaling approval with honking horns and thumbs up. “I saw some of the same people making a few trips,” Wanda told me.

Another mob broke into Ken’s Market, a block away, and set it on fire. Wanda’s 11-year-old daughter was frightened. There was an out-of-control fire close by. Sirens could be heard in the distance, but no firefighters or police came down Normandie. As the night went on, things got worse. More people spilled into the streets. Gunshots were heard, and smoke blanketed the neighborhood.

Just before sunrise, the shooting got closer, and Wanda decided to leave. It took hours to reach safety, evading fires, cops and angry crowds. Even from sedate Ladera Heights, with its well-kept homes and manicured lawns, the air was acrid with the smell of smoke. At 8 a.m. Friday, we headed down Slauson to check Wanda’s home. Her neighborhood gas station was gone. So washer supermarket and bakery. The furniture store had been pillaged.

But Wanda was lucky. Her apartment building had not caught fire. The cleaning shop where she had left some of her clothes was still standing. Her car was safe at Dorsey’s Body Shop, where she had taken it for repairs. The arsonists had concentrated on stores owned by Koreans, who sell most of the food in the neighborhood. “What are people who don’t have cars going to do to get food?” she wondered. Many of the businesses will not be rebuilt, and life at ground zero will never be the same.