Man arrested in LAPD pursuit shootout held on $1-million bail
A man found hiding in a dumpster after multiple shootouts with police through the streets of Los Angeles was identified Tuesday.
Avel Jowan Turks, 18, of Los Angeles was booked on suspicion of attempted murder and was being held in lieu of $1-million bail, jail and police records show.
An LAPD official confirmed that Turks was the surviving suspect from an hours-long pursuit and search in South Los Angeles early Monday that left an officer wounded and Turks’ alleged accomplice dead in a final shootout.
Police said the confrontation started near Florence Avenue and Figueroa Street about 2:20 a.m., when police tried to pull over the driver of a Chevy Tahoe for reckless driving.
The SUV sped off, police said, leading officers along surface streets before heading onto the 110 Freeway. The Tahoe briefly got off the freeway before stopping on the Vernon Avenue on-ramp, where a gunman got out of the passenger seat and traded fire with LAPD officers, police said.
After speeding off again, the assailants got off the freeway at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and drove east into an industrial area near USC and crashed into a curb at 37th and Hill streets, Cmdr. Andy Smith said.
The two men ran from the car and hid as police searched the neighborhood. Officers set up a perimeter and called in two helicopters, a SWAT team and police dogs, he said.
About two hours after the chase began, a police dog found Turks in a dumpster. Officers lobbed a flash grenade to stun him and used pepper spray to subdue him and take him into custody.
The second man – identified as Andre Maurice Jones, 37, of Los Angeles – was found carrying a rifle about a block away on Grand Avenue between 38th and 37th streets.
The department’s SWAT team used one of its two BearCat armored vehicles, a $150,000 rescue vehicle bought in 2003, to shield them as they approached Jones.
Smith said Jones peppered the BearCat with bullets, striking the SWAT officer, before he was killed by return fire, Smith said.
“Thank goodness we had that armored vehicle as a shield because a regular police cruiser would have been Swiss cheese,” Smith said.
The rifle Jones was wielding is “rare,” Smith said, and was modified with a plastic stock, assault rifle pistol grip and a high-capacity drum magazine.
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