Redondo Beach Officer Shot, Gunman Dies in Battle

A gunman was killed and a police officer wounded in the face Tuesday afternoon during a point-blank shoot-out in a Redondo Beach residence, authorities said. After the gun battle, another man was found shot to death inside the house.

The officer, Leonard Knott, 40, a 17-year veteran of the Redondo Beach Police Department, was later reported in satisfactory condition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he was undergoing treatment for wounds left by a pistol bullet that entered his mouth and lodged near his spine.

Neither the man found shot to death nor the man who died in the gun battle with police was immediately identified in the aftermath of the perplexing incident.

Police said the man found shot to death apparently had been slain by the gunman. They said one of the men was a resident of the home, but they did not say which one.

“We’re trying to find a motive,” Redondo Beach Police Lt. John Nelson said. “It has indications (that the officers arrived) on the scene of a homicide and somebody trying to make a getaway. That’s what it looks like on the surface, but it may, and probably will, turn out to be more than that.”

Report of Shots Fired

Capt. Roger Bass, commander of the Redondo Beach Police Department’s detective bureau, said officers received a call about 1:35 p.m. that shots were being fired inside a home in the 300 block of North Francisca Street, about a block from the police station.

Bass said that when the first three officers reached the three-story townhouse, they identified themselves and pounded on the door to no avail.

“Fearing that a serious crime had just occurred or that a serious crime was about to occur, the officers forced entry into the residence,” Bass said. “The officers were immediately met with gunfire from within the residence.”

Bass said the gunman fired from behind a stairwell and the officers returned fire from the doorway of the condominium. Sprawled on the floor between them was the body of the man who apparently had been shot earlier.

During the brief, intense gun battle at a range of only a few feet, Knott was struck once and the gunman was hit several times, investigators said.

The shot that struck Knott hurled him back out onto the street, where neighbors said he lay, propped up on one arm, until paramedics arrived.

Officers Dash to Scene

Several off-duty officers who had been holding a demonstration outside the police station to demand more pay dashed a block to the aid of their three associates when the gun battle erupted.

Students at Redondo Union High School, across the street from the condominium, were in class when the shooting erupted. The students were directed away from the scene until police determined that it was safe for them to return.

A man who visited the scene after the shooting told a reporter that he knew both of the men who died in the townhouse. The visitor, who declined to identify himself, said the two men had been friends for years and had attended college together in Ohio. The visitor declined to speculate on any motive for the shootings or on which of the two was the gunman who engaged in the shoot-out with police.

Terry Ryan, who lives near the townhouse where the shooting took place, said the man who lived there stopped by on Monday to say that he was moving to Cleveland this week and would like to sell some personal belongings before he left.

Ryan said that at the man’s invitation, he walked over to the townhouse and looked at a bed, a battery charger and several other “odds and ends,” but decided not to buy anything.

The man introduced Ryan to his wife, and both of them seemed quite cordial, Ryan said. Ryan said that on Tuesday he saw one of the gunshot victims lying dead in the home, but he could not tell if it was the man to whom he had spoken on Monday.

Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer, Adrianne Goodman, James Rainey and Sheryl Stolberg contributed to this story.