Officer killed, another injured in California shootout

WHITTIER, Calif. — One officer was killed and a second injured in a shootout with a gang member who was wounded in a Monday morning altercation in Whittier, authorities said.

Three Whittier Police Department officers were responding to the scene of a traffic collision about 8 a.m. when a 26-year-old recently paroled man driving a stolen car opened fire with a semiautomatic pistol, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. John Corina.

Two officers were hit by gunfire and taken to the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, where one was pronounced dead, Lt. Corina said.

The other wounded officer is in stable condition while the suspect was taken to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and is in unknown condition.

The shooter, according to police, had been involved in a traffic accident with another vehicle and approached the driver he had rear-ended to help push his silver car off to the side of the road around the corner.

Police officers arrived in three separate cars and approached the man, who was seated in the silver car, Lt. Corina said. He got out and as officers moved to pat him down, he pulled a gun from his waistband and began shooting at close range.

“He started firing at the officers and they returned fire,” Lt. Corina said. “We are still looking into that, why he just opened fire.”

Officers believed they were responding to a routine traffic call and did not know the vehicle was stolen when they approached.

“It seems like a simple traffic accident and next thing they know they’re in a gunfight,” Lt. Corina said, adding that “you never know when you respond to a call, what you are going to run into.”

Lt. Corina said both officers were wearing bulletproof vests and were shot in the body.

Police have not identified the shooter pending the ongoing investigation, but described him as a Los Angeles gang member who had been released on parole within the last two weeks.

Hours before his run-in with Whittier police, he is suspected of fatally shooting a man who may have been a relative and stealing his car in East Los Angeles. Further details of that killing were not released.

It was the first fatal shooting of a police officer in Whittier in more than 37 years.