Thirteen minutes before a West Oakland woman was fatally struck by a stray bullet as she protected her children in front of her home, a neighbor made a 911 call with a chilling warning: Police had better get there because someone was about to get hurt.

The call about an escalating argument between two groups at 30th and Chestnut streets was one of hundreds that neighbors said they have made to police in the past few years to clean up an alleged drug house. They say the residence is the source of much violence and criminal activity.

On Monday, however, the call at 4:32 p.m. didn’t prompt dispatchers to send police to the scene, a review of police scanner activity showed. It wasn’t until 4:45 p.m. that dispatch alerted police, and by then the fight had erupted into a shootout, with a stray bullet fatally striking Kaiser employee Chyemil Pierce, 30, as she yelled for her children to run to safety.

Police on Wednesday were questioning several people who had been taken into custody. No arrests had been made in the shooting, which police said was gang-related. Police would not say whether the people in custody were connected with the problem house that was 12 properties away from where Pierce lived.

But Police Chief Sean Whent said police were indeed familiar with the house on the 1100 block of 30th Street that was the source of many neighborhood complaints.

House raided Nov. 4

The alleged drug house was raided by police Nov. 4, Whent said. Even after police shut it down and cut off water and electricity, people continued using it as a base for criminal activity.

“It remains a project that we’re working on and a source of complaints in the neighborhood — as recently as the day the shooting occurred,” said Whent, adding that the city attorney was involved in helping “abate” criminal activity at the property.

The house is owned by the trust of Thelma G. Wilson, who died in 2013 at age 98, records show. Efforts to reach her relatives were unsuccessful.

The chief also said that the initial 911 call about the argument was considered routine — with no mention of weaponry — and that police don’t always respond to reports of arguments. After dispatchers alerted officers to the shooting, police were there within three minutes, Whent said.

The West Oakland neighborhood two blocks from McClymonds High School is a community in transition. New homeowners mingle with longtime residents in an urban setting that remains a hodgepodge of aging warehouses and residences.

“The tension between new and old residents is real, and there are extremes,” said a newer resident, who asked to remain anonymous. “But whatever our differences may be, everyone is outraged by the killing of a mother trying to protect her kids.”

Some residents were outraged by the city’s seemingly slow response to the fight — and to the long-brewing trouble in the neighborhood.

The resident who said he called 911 just before Pierce was killed told The Chronicle: “There were loud screaming arguments between a group of people on 30th Street before the shooting. I called it in, advising the dispatcher that there had already been violence there and it sounded like more was coming.” He asked that his name not be used out of fear of retaliation.

6 shootings in 6 months

Neighbors have documented six shootings in the past six months, including two in the past month, and they watched police and federal authorities raid the house in November, they said, and haul out a cache of firearms.

The area around the house is “an open-air drug market,” said a neighbor who asked not to be named.

There is concern and growing cynicism among newer residents — and a sense of resignation among longtime residents — that little will change until the city puts resources into solving the problem.

“People are dying. Nobody cares,” Joe Russack wrote in an e-mail. He lives nearby and said neighborhood residents have filed hundreds of reports, given authorities descriptions, license plates and addresses — anything to help.

“Lacking other options, we even post on social media,” Russack said. “And nothing happens. In this case, for a year.”

For others, Monday’s shooting was merely confirmation of a situation that has plagued the neighborhood for far too long.

New memorial on block

As a memorial went up to celebrate Pierce’s life, two others sat farther down the block, fading tributes on opposite sides of the street, for a man and woman shot there a week earlier.

“This has been happening for years and years,” said a 69-year-old man who didn’t want to give his name. “Now we’re seeing innocent people getting killed — people who are not in the (drug) game.”

He lamented that the situation had reached a point where “you can’t even walk down the street for fear of having a bullet with your name on it.”

For some youngsters, it’s a reality they grew up with and have come to view as commonplace, something that could happen anywhere, anytime.

“You want to know what it’s like to live around here?” said a young man as he walked down the sidewalk. “It’s nice.”

And then, referring to the shooting, he added: “Everybody has to die somewhere.”

Chronicle staff writer Rachel Swan contributed to this report.

Chip Johnson and Henry K. Lee are San Francisco Chronicle

staff writers. E-mail:

chjohnson@sfchronicle.com

hlee@sfchronicle.com

How to help

The family of Chyemil Pierce has set up a donation account at Wells Fargo Bank. The account number of the Chyemil Pierce Memorial Fund is 2923997700.