Three Los Angeles police officers were shot Wednesday in a confrontation with a wanted parolee who was found dead hours later after a standoff. The three senior officers, members of a K-9 dog-handling unit, were hospitalized in stable condition after the shooting in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood near downtown. Officers seeking a parolee found him barricaded in a shed and refusing to obey commands to surrender, reports the Associated Press. K-9 officers were called in to help and the officers used what police described as a gas “chemical agent” in another effort to force the man to surrender.
“Unfortunately, that suspect responded to that chemical agent by opening the shed and opening fire on the officers,” hitting three of them, said police Commander Stacy Spell. The police department issued a citywide tactical alert, and officers, including SWAT team members, flooded into the area and sealed it off. SWAT robots were sent in to keep an eye on the suspect and one fired gas into the shed. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the suspect was shot by police or killed himself. The lengthy time of the standoff shows the officers were “taking their time to try to de-escalate this and more importantly, resolve this peacefully,” said Assistant Police Chief Al Labrada. “And unfortunately, behavior of this individual did not result in that. A very deadly situation.”
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