Police Say Officer Was Led to Ambush

An undercover Fullerton police officer was lured to his death when he agreed to accompany a drug suspect to a house in Downey, where a bloody ambush awaited him, Downey police alleged Friday.

Officer Tommy De La Rosa was struck five times Thursday when at least four gunmen opened fire as he stepped from a late-model van to complete an undercover drug transaction. Before collapsing, the 43-year-old veteran officer managed to return fire, fatally wounding Joseph Najera Rodriguez, 35, the man who police said directed De La Rosa to an address in the 8900 block of Arrington Avenue.

Downey Police Chief D. Clayton Mayes said that De La Rosa had gone to meet Rodriguez at another location in town a short time before the shooting as part of a “reverse sting” operation in which the officer, posing as a drug dealer, planned to sell $4 million worth of cocaine to Rodriguez and his associates.

Rodriguez’s group had been identified as a major cocaine trafficking ring operating in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The group had been placed under surveillance two weeks ago by an Orange County task force led by the Fullerton Police Department.

Fullerton Police Chief Philip Goehring said De La Rosa was carrying in his van a small amount of cocaine and another substance that was intended to look like cocaine.

Mayes said the men apparently had no intention of paying the $4-million asking price for the drugs. Instead, he said, they arranged to rob De La Rosa, apparently unaware he was an undercover police officer in a sting operation.

“It would appear that it was a drug rip-off,” Mayes said during a news conference. “They were going to take him down.”

Mayes also disclosed that the shooting took place at a house where backup police officers could not provide adequate security. The house is near the end of a dead-end street. Mayes said about 30 backup officers were forced to wait some distance away while an Anaheim police helicopter tried to monitor De La Rosa from overhead. Mayes said it was “De La Rosa’s judgment call” to go ahead with the operation and accompany Rodriguez to the house where the gun battle took place.

Although the helicopter pilot tried to keep De La Rosa in view, Mayes said, the suspects opened fire on him as he stepped beneath a roof overhang. When the pilot spotted De La Rosa staggering backward, he radioed the backup officers for help.

By Friday, police had arrested 13 suspects in connection with the shooting and the alleged cocaine ring.