An off-duty Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer found himself on the wrong end of the barrel Sunday afternoon, catching a bullet in his leg during what authorities are labeling a likely gang-related shooting. The incident unfurled at the Berri Brothers station, located in the 9300 block of Somerset Boulevard, Bellflower. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which took the reins of the investigation, the shooting occurred at around 5:15 p.m., CBS News Los Angeles reported.

At the rolling up to the scene, detectives found the officer wounded amidst patrons and tiresome vehicles, a bystander in a narrative all too common in the Southland's storied struggles with gang violence. The authorities speculate that the officer, whose name has been withheld, was not the chosen quarry of the gunfire but rather an inadvertent casualty in the street's arbitrary theatre of conflict.

The wounded officer was spirited away to a local hospital for his non-life-threatening injuries. Meanwhile, aerial footage captured by SkyCal showed the station cloaked in the gravity of investigation as detectives canvassed the area, a silent testament to violence's abrupt interruption of the day.

As deputies descended on the chaotic backdrop, shots shattered the suburban silence, sending alarm through the community's seemingly sturdy facade. Delia Preciado, a local employee, recounted the harrowing moments to OnScene.TV obtained by KTLA, "I heard like eight shots." Her voice joined the chorus of residents and workers in the area, the gunshot echos punctuating their anecdotal landscape of Bellflower — a town gripping the mantle of 'kind of quiet' in the aftershock of violence.

Scant details have emerged following the pandemonium that besieged the Bellflower gas station. The shooter, or shooters, vanished before law enforcement arrived on the scene, leaving more questions than answers behind.