Officers kill suspect in man’s slaying
Police see a body lying in street and pursue the gunman, shooting him.
Lalo Felix was sitting in his Boyle Heights home late Wednesday watching TV when a real-life drama unfolded right outside.
He heard yelling and what he believes were more than a dozen gunshots so close that they didn’t echo.
“There were so many it was hard to count them,” he said.
He threw himself onto the floor, then crawled to check on his wife and daughter. He sneaked a look out his kitchen window at 3rd and Mathews streets and saw a crowd of police officers.
Felix’s side yard was where Los Angeles police officers fatally shot a 39-yearold man who they say was armed with a gun. Moments before, police said, the man gunned down a 29-year-old man in the middle of nearby 4th Street.
The crowd of officers in Felix’s yard was to be expected given the intense public scrutiny that police shootings are receiving these days nationwide. Those concerns escalated with last week’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white South Carolina police officer that was captured on a cellphone video. That officer has been fired and charged with murder.
Wednesday’s shooting marked the LAPD’s 19th officer-involved shooting of 2015. Acknowledging the national climate, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith emphasized that the Los Angeles incident should be judged independently.
“Recently, and especially after the events in South Carolina, everybody has been paying close attention to officer-involved shootings,” Smith said. “We need to remember that every officer-involved shooting has to be evaluated based on its own merit and its own set of circumstances — not what happened 3,000 miles away.”
In this case, Smith said, the department believes the man shot by officers was the armed suspect in the first killing. “We believe we have our guy,” he said.
Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday’s shooting “appears to be legitimate police reaction to a very tough situation. When I talk about these numbers, 57 homicides year to date, those are real incidents. And when police officers confront someone who is committing a homicide or has just committed a homicide, they need to do what they need to do to protect the community and themselves.”
A handgun was recovered at the scene of the police shooting, authorities said, and it is being checked to determine if it was discharged in the confrontation with officers.
The dead men’s names were not released Thursday because the Los Angeles County coroner’s office was still trying to reach the next of kin.
The incident began shortly before 10:30 p.m., when officers on routine patrol near 4th and Soto streets heard gunshots and saw a man dead in the street. The officers saw another man running east from the scene. An LAPD helicopter tracked the man to Felix’s yard, where the second shooting occurred.
Before daybreak Thursday, shooting investigators were going door to door. LAPD Sgt. Barry Montgomery said detectives were interviewing witnesses and checking businesses for surveillance footage that may have captured the shootings.
“There were witnesses. It wasn’t that late — we’re talking 10:25 in the evening,” Montgomery said. “It’s a busy intersection at that time.”