After publishing just three paragraphs on the Adams and Budlong shooting — part of which I witnessed and described here — last week, the L.A. Times still has not bothered to mention that someone died during the incident. Their one and only mention of the story:
10:55 PM | March 11, 2009Los Angeles police shot and injured a suspect they were chasing on foot in a neighborhood around the USC campus Wednesday night. The gunfire prompted a campus-wide emergency notification that warned students to remain indoors.
Officers in the University Park area saw four men, one with a gun, and began chasing them about 8:30 p.m. During the pursuit, officers shot one suspect, according to Ana Aguirre of the Los Angeles Police Department. The man was taken to a hospital and his condition was not known. The other suspects remained at large and police searched the area with dogs, Aguirre said.
Reports of the gunfire apparently alerted USC authorities, who activated the “Trojan Alert,” a system that text messages or e-mails students to inform them of an emergency. Police said the incident occurred near but not on the USC campus.
– Julie Cart
I called LAPD to get some more information, and here’s what the L.A. Times left out:
Two LAPD members stopped a car with four Hispanic males at the corner of Budlong and Adams boulevards at about 8:30 p.m. on March 11. The officers were on foot, and there was another man standing near the car on the street curb. Lt. John Romero of LAPD media relations told me it was an “investigative stop,” but the nature of the investigation has not been released.
The driver produced a handgun, and an officer shot him.
“We’re not saying whether he pointed [the gun], raised it, did any of that,” Romero said of the driver. “That has not been released.” He would only elaborate that the handgun was produced in a “threatening manner.”
The driver headed east on Adams Blvd, although it’s not clear whether he left before or after he was shot. He turned right onto Menlo Ave, where he hit a USC tram shortly after turning onto the street. He kept going on Menlo, striking a trailer and an office pod before crashing into a pick-up truck and coming to a stop. The driver slouched over the wheel, unconscious and bleeding, and the three passengers fled the scene.
A group of people gathered outside. By the time the police arrived a few minutes later, I was able to come out, see what had happened, go back inside for my cell phone, call 9-1-1, request an ambulance, hang up, have the operator call me back, and try to see the driver’s injuries better. LAPD came and told us there were armed suspects who had fled the vehicle, and they set up a perimeter because the passengers were still at large. Four hours later, all three had been caught. One was found in a tree and one was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting posing as a member. The man who had been standing on the curb at the original investigative stop was also taken into custody.
The driver died, but I don’t know if it happened before or after the ambulance came. Romero said the coroner’s office has released his name and cause of death, but their information officer has not returned my calls yet.
According to the felony murder rule, if you commit a crime and anybody dies as a result, you can be charged with murder. Romero said the three passengers and the man on the street were arrested for murder, but the D.A. did not file those charges against them. I’m not sure what crime they could have committed that led to the driver’s death, considering he’s the one who produced a gun and fled the “investigative stop,” unless he was still alive when they ran from the crash scene. He looked like he could have been dead — he was completely unresponsive, and there was blood everywhere.
I will update the identity, cause of death, and charges filed as soon as possible, since the L.A. Times is either so gutted or so negligent that they don’t think this is worth following up on. I will also do my best to figure out if the man had a criminal record and if the people involved were gang-affiliated.
1 Comment
September 12, 2009 at 6:06 am
This lack of coverage is appalling. A police helicopter circled over my house for at least three hours this morning 9/11/09 near La Cienaga and Fairfax shouting “you are under arrest. Get out of the car, drop any weapons and lie face down on the ground” over loudspeakers. It was completely crazy. I never knew helicopters could fly that long without refueling. No mention anywhere in the news that I could see. Called the police station, who either a) had no idea what was going on or b) didn’t want to say. They told me to stay inside. Everyone else on my block was outside putting their trash on the curb, going to work like this was nothing unusual. We have ghetto birds from time to time but this was super close, sustained over hours and specific in terms of subduing armed suspects. Not one effing word in the media anywhere. A free press is truly an essential component of a free society – that’s all I have to say. Clearly capitalism is completely failing to adequately fund the news industry.