Deputy, Drug Suspect Slain in Raid on Palmdale Home : Narcotics: A woman is held on suspicion of murder. Two children and an elderly man are questioned.

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and a drug suspect were shot to death and another deputy was injured Monday morning when narcotics investigators raided a suspected methamphetamine sales den in Palmdale.

Authorities said the suspect opened fire with a rifle, shooting at deputies from a bedroom and through a wall of the mobile home, in which a small amount of drugs was later found.

The deputy, Richard B. Hammack, 31, of Quartz Hill, died after he was taken in a sheriff’s car to Palmdale Hospital Medical Center. A 7 1/2-year veteran who had worked for the last two years in the Antelope Valley, Hammack was not wearing a bulletproof vest when he was hit three times in the the neck, face and upper body, Sheriff Sherman Block said.

A deputy whose name was not released was shot in the hand and was treated at the hospital and released.

The dead suspect, shot several times by deputies, was identified as John White, 37. His wife, Del White, 30, was arrested on suspicion of murder and was being held without bail. Her elderly father and two of her young children, who were in the mobile home at the time of the shootout, were being questioned by investigators late Monday.

Hammack had recently returned to work with the Antelope Valley station’s narcotics squad after spending two days on riot duty in Los Angeles after the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, Block said.

He was the second deputy fatally shot in the last six weeks. Before those shootings, the department had not lost an officer in hostile action in more than three years.

Deputies were still trying to piece together the sequence of the shooting late Monday and declined to release full details. The incident occurred about 9:30 a.m. when deputies from the narcotics team attempted to serve a search warrant at the White residence in the Sagetree Village Mobile Home Park at Avenue R and 35th Street East, deputies said.

The search warrant was issued after neighbors complained and an informant told investigators that drugs were being sold at the mobile home on Gazelle Drive in the large, walled park, Block said.

“It was not considered a high-risk warrant,” Block said.

Hammack was assigned to walk up to the mobile home in plainclothes and knock on the door. Other deputies hiding nearby were to announce themselves and rush in once the door was opened.

But the plan went awry. Details were sketchy, but officials said that as deputies rushed into the mobile home, one became involved in a scuffle with Del White in the entry area. The other deputies pushed by them and saw John White in a bedroom with a rifle.

Lt. Don Bear, in charge of the investigation of the shooting for the sheriff’s homicide bureau, said Hammack and two other deputies saw White raise the rifle and point it at them. White and the three deputies exchanged fire, Bear said.

Block said there was “a lot” of shooting but he did not release the number of rounds fired. Hammack was hit three times near the door to the bedroom where White was firing, authorities said. The other deputy was injured when a flashlight was shot out of his hand, they said.

“Eventually all of the deputies retreated, and they noticed that one deputy was not with them when they came out,” said Deputy Bill Wehner, a department spokesman.

Wehner said Hammack had not been expected to go inside the trailer because he was not part of the entry team. As a result, he was not wearing a bulletproof vest, as were the other deputies. A vest may not have saved his life anyway, because the fatal wounds were to his face and neck, Block said.

Officials gave conflicting explanations of some of the circumstances surrounding Hammack’s death. Block said Hammack ran inside the trailer after hearing gunfire, but Bear said he was already inside when the shooting started.

White was found shot to death in the bedroom.

Bear said small amounts of what appeared to be cocaine and methamphetamine were found in the mobile home after the shootout.

Wehner said the department’s preliminary investigation indicates that the bullets that killed Hammack were fired by White’s rifle.

Neighbors said the Whites had lived in the mobile home for about five years. One neighbor said John White, who went by the name Jack, was a former masonry worker who had studied to be a nurse. Block said White previously had been arrested for burglary and grand theft, but the outcome of those cases could not be immediately determined.

White’s mobile home, with children’s bicycles, toys and a plastic pool out front, had been the source of complaints about noise. Neighbors also said the residence attracted a constant procession of strangers.

“There were people coming in and out of there a lot,” said Brenda Heckathorn, who lives across the street.

“We’ve always had our suspicions,” Heckathorn said, but she added that she never saw drugs sold or used at the location.

Hammack was engaged to be married and his fiancee was consoled by Block at the Palmdale station after the shooting.

The death was believed to be the first in a hostile situation in the sprawling region that the Sheriff’s Department covers in Palmdale, Lancaster and many nearby desert communities. Three deputies have been killed on duty in car accidents in the area.

“I’ve lost my best friend,” one red-eyed deputy said outside the shooting scene.

The last deputy fatally shot in the line of duty was Nelson Yamamoto, a rookie who died March 31 after he was wounded in a shootout with murder suspects in Walnut Park.

Deputy Jack Miller was shot to death in January, 1989. Like Hammack, he was serving a search warrant in a narcotics investigation when he was killed.