Three Los Angeles police officers were shot and wounded in a confrontation with a wanted parolee who was found dead hours later after a standoff, police said.
The three officers, all senior officers and members of an Los Angeles Police Department\u2019s K-9 dog-handling unit, were hospitalized in stable condition after the shooting that occurred Wednesday in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood near downtown.
The three were alert and Mayor Karen Bass said she had a conversation with two of them at the hospital and they asked her about colleagues who were looking for the suspect.
\u201cThey weren\u2019t concerned about themselves,\u201d she said at a news conference.
\u201cOur hearts go out to them for their speedy recovery and also for the trauma that their families are facing right now,\u201d Bass said.
Officers were looking for a parolee at large at around 4 p.m. but when they found him he was barricaded in a shed and refused to obey commands to surrender, the department said.
K-9 officers were called in to help and the officers used what police described as a gas \u201cchemical agent\u201d in another effort to force the man to surrender.
\u201cUnfortunately, that suspect responded to that chemical agent by opening the shed and opening fire on the officers,\u201d hitting three of them, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Stacy Spell said.
The police department issued a citywide tactical alert, meaning officers from across the city are available to respond to the scene if needed. 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.
The situation ended shortly before 9 p.m. and police later said the suspect was found and pronounced dead at the scene.
It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether he was shot by police or killed himself.
The lengthy time of the standoff shows the officers were \u201ctaking their time to try to de-escalate this and more importantly, resolve this peacefully,\u201d Los Angeles Police Assistant Chief Al Labrada said. \u201cAnd unfortunately, behavior of this individual did not result in that. A very deadly situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n