Two men opened fire on a police car patrolling a tough part of Los Angeles, but the two officers inside were not injured and one was able to shoot back, authorities said on Monday.
One of the suspects was later arrested and the other is on the loose.
Police have not yet determined a motive for the Sunday night shooting in South Los Angeles — an area plagued by gang violence — but said there were no indications it was linked to other attacks on police in the country.
“It was a complete unprovoked attack,” Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Deputy Chief Bob Green said initially.
However, Green later said police also were looking into whether the officers might have driven into an ongoing incident and were inadvertently fired at.
“Last night, the initial assessment, based on the reaction of officers and the adrenaline factor, was they were getting ambushed, but, you know, things change and it takes a lot to investigate this,” Green said.
Officers arrested one man shortly after the attack. Christopher Taylor, 18, was booked on suspicion of shooting at an occupied vehicle.
An hours-long search followed for the other man, but he remained at large. Police found a handgun and rifle at the scene, and were looking for video evidence and conducting interviews to determine details such as why and how the shooting occurred.
The two officers were responding to an unrelated radio call and driving slowly in a neighborhood when they saw two men on a sidewalk and the flash of a rifle being fired, police said.
The officers stopped their car, and one got out and returned fire as the men fled. Police found one suspect, uninjured, a short time later, along with a rifle and another weapon.
Police searched the neighborhood throughout the night for the other suspect, warning nearby residents to stay in their homes. Police stopped the search early on Monday after the suspect was not found.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference on Monday that he was concerned that people might be targeting officers, but added that the neighborhood had been marred by gang violence during the past several months and there had been a significant number of gang shootings.
The shooting comes as protesters in California and across the country have rallied for weeks against police killings of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York, and as an autopsy report released on Monday showed that an unarmed black man killed by Los Angeles police officers was shot three times, including once in the back at close range.
The highly anticipated autopsy report of the Aug. 11 death of Ezell Ford was released by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and shows that he was shot once in the back, once in the arm and once in the abdomen.
The wound to his back left a “muzzle imprint” on his skin, suggesting Ford was shot at very close range.
Steven Lerman, the lawyer for Ford’s family, decried what he called the “horrifying” autopsy report.
“What they did to Mr Ford is nothing short of criminal,” Lerman said.
Ford, who was 25 and apparently suffered from mental illness, was killed during a confrontation with two patrol officers — Sharlton Wampler and Antonio Villegas — in southern Los Angeles.
At the time of the incident, Ford was alone, unarmed and walking on the sidewalk.
The autopsy report does not provide a narrative of the shooting, but the LAPD says the incident unfolded with Wampler and Villegas attempting to talk to Ford.
However, he walked away and was “attempting to conceal his hands,” it said.
The officers followed Ford and as one of them tried to grab him, “Ford grabbed the officer’s handgun and attempted to remove the gun from its holster,” according to an LAPD statement. “The officer yelled out to his partner that Mr Ford had his gun. The officer’s partner then fired two rounds, striking Mr Ford. At about the same time, the officer on the ground while on his back grabbed his backup weapon, reached around Mr Ford and fired one shot at close range striking Mr Ford in the back.”
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS