Suspect in Fatal Shooting of Deputy Is Apprehended

A suspect wanted in connection with the shooting death of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was arrested Thursday in Gardena, authorities said.

Juan Manuel Mazariego, 22, was taken into custody on Berendo Avenue just south of Rosecrans Avenue at 6:20 p.m., investigators said. He will be booked for murder and is being held without bail, they said. No other details of his arrest were available.

Mazariego is the cousin of Cesar Uriel Mazariego-Molina, 26, who is accused of shooting Deputy Nelson Yamamoto, 26, Sunday evening in the unincorporated county area of Walnut Park. Mazariego-Molina remains at large, deputies said.

Yamamoto was fatally wounded in a brief but intense gun battle in the 2500 block of Cass Place after he and two other deputies went to a garage to investigate a report of a man threatening neighbors with a gun.

The officers “peered through a window, and they saw an individual removing a firearm from his waistband and (putting) it on a counter,” Sheriff Sherman Block said after the incident.

Block said that when the deputies ordered the men who were inside to walk out with their hands up, Homero Isidoro Ibarra, 30, came out first, holding at his side a realistic replica of a pistol.

“He was ordered to drop the weapon and face the garage,” the sheriff said. “Simultaneously, gunshots started coming from the garage. At that time, the deputies opened fire. . . . Ibarra was fatally wounded. The shots (that hit him) probably came from the deputies.”

As Yamamoto, who was cut down in the furious exchange of gunfire, slumped to the ground, Mazariego-Molina escaped with his cousin, who was taken into custody Thursday, deputies said.

Mazariego-Molina is also wanted as a suspect in a murder in North Hollywood and in two murders in El Salvador, deputies said.

Yamamoto, who joined the department three years ago, died Tuesday of his wounds.