A 22-year-old man was shot and killed early Sunday morning in El Sereno by one of two Los Angeles Police Department officers from Hollenbeck division who responded to a report of a man armed with a gun.
The officer-involved shooting happened on the 3400 block of Amethyst Street, near the intersection of Topaz Street and Huntington Drive, and the man who died on the scene was identified by police only as Christian Escobedo. No other details were disclosed besides his age.
It was not clear what caused officers to shoot.
According to an LAPD press release, officers responded to a radio call about 6:30 a.m.
“The comments of the call described two males who appeared to be sleeping on the ground behind a parked car and one of the men had a handgun”, the release states. “As the officers arrived, one of the men ran from the area. The other male, who was armed with a handgun, was illuminated by an officer and turned in the officer’s direction with the handgun; at which time there was an Officer-Involved Shooting.”
Los Angeles Fire Department personnel responded and determined the suspect was dead. Police said a loaded handgun was recovered at the scene.
#LAPD PIO Detective Aguilar provides information as to an Officer-Involved Shooting (OIS) that occurred earlier today. Officers were responding to a call of a Man with a Gun. No officers injured. Suspect struck by gunfire and pronounced dead. Handgun recovered at scene pic.twitter.com/IS7bXSnLWg
— LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) January 14, 2018
No officers were injured and investigators are still trying to identify and locate the male who ran from the scene. The officers involved have not been identified and the shooting is being investigate by the LAPD’s specialized Force Investigation Division (FID).
Sunday’s was the LAPD’s first officer-involved shooting in 2018 and the first within Hollenbeck division since a June 2017 incident, also in El Sereno, that left an 18-year-old man critically wounded. According to an LAPD release, Pedro Echeverría produced a handgun during an altercation with police.
There were two officer-involved shootings in Hollenbeck division in 2017, including the March 24 fatal shooting of Fred Barragán in Boyle Heights. There was a record number of officer-involved shootings in Hollenbeck in 2016, including five fatalities in Boyle Heights.
