WINNETKA, Calif. (FOX 11 / CNS) – Members of a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team were holding positions on Friday outside a home in Winnetka where an armed man barricaded himself after pointing a gun at police, authorities said.
The man was holed up in a stranger’s home near Oso Avenue and Leadwell Street, said Officer Sal Lopez of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Metropolitan Division. Lopez said the man pointed a gun at police officers who
attempted to stop him in that area at 10:48 p.m. Thursday, but the man did not shoot.
The suspect ran from police and broke into a stranger’s home. Anyone who may have been inside the home was no longer in there early this morning, Lopez said, although he didn’t know exactly how many residents lived there.
The suspect was still inside the home as of 4:45 a.m. Police said SWAT was shooting rounds of tear gas into the home to get the suspect to surrender.
Members of the public were advised to avoid the area.
Winnetka was preciously the scene of a tragedy for the LAPD SWAT team, which suffered one officer killed and one wounded on Feb. 7, 2008, in the 19800 block of Welby Way. Killed was 51-year-old Officer Randal Simmons, the only member of the LAPD SWAT team, which came into being in 1967, ever killed on duty, while 51-year-old Officer James Veenstra was wounded by shots in the face and jaw. Two other officers suffered minor injuries.
Edwin Rivera, 20, who earlier had killed his father and two older brothers, was identified as the shooter and killed by a sniper.
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