Halfway House Resident Is Shot by Police

A resident of a halfway house for patients with mental disorders was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer early Saturday after he brandished a knife at two officers investigating a domestic dispute at the address, authorities said.

Lawrence Friedman, 24, who family members said was shot three times in the torso, was being treated in the intensive care unit at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he was under police guard.

The shooting occurred shortly after 1 a.m. when Officers Kelly Stallings and Sean Williams were called to the 8200 block of Amigo Avenue to investigate an argument between a halfway house staff member and his girlfriend, according to reports from police and neighbors.

Within moments of their arrival, Friedman, who was not involved in the dispute, reportedly approached the officers with a knife as they stood in the driveway of the home.

Stallings, 29, a five-year veteran assigned to the LAPD’s West Valley station, told Friedman several times to stop and drop his weapon, said Sgt. Corina Smith. When he did not, she fired three rounds from her .38-caliber service revolver.

Neighbors reported seeing a man lying in the driveway between two parked cars before they were ushered away by more than 10 police officers who rushed to the scene.

“You could hear someone yelling, ‘Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!’ ” said one neighbor on the street just west of Reseda Boulevard. “You heard three shots. Then the voices again, saying, ‘They shot him!’ ”

Police provided little information Saturday about the shooting and the domestic dispute that preceded it. But Hideko Cross, Friedman’s mother, said her son was apparently sleeping and was awakened by the argument or the arrival of police.

“The doorbell woke him up,” she said. “They tell us he was startled and he rushed out the door with a knife, but we don’t know. They shot him from 10 feet away. He was hit in the spine. The doctors tell us our son may never walk again.”

Ron Cross, the wounded man’s stepfather, said Friedman had spent the last two years at the halfway home known as Amigo House.

“He was just not a violent boy,” he said. “He doesn’t hurt people. He just doesn’t have that in him. It’s not possible.”

Friedman’s parents confirmed that he was recently removed from the home for a short time after putting his fist through a windowpane. “It’s only things he hits,” Hideko Cross said. “When he gets excited, he gets agitated. Ask anybody--he’s harmless.”

The manager of the home could not be reached for comment.

Twenty-year-old Sinh Trinh, who lives next door with his parents, said most neighbors considered the residents at Amigo House harmless. “We never feared the people there,” he said. “We considered them to be just regular neighbors.”

Trinh said Amigo House residents often argued in the street and would knock on neighborhood doors. “They’d sometimes ask strange questions. Often, you couldn’t understand them.”

Friedman is described as a slender man with short hair given to mumbling his words.

“Larry’s a good kid, he’s pretty cool,” said one neighbor who declined to give his name. “He wasn’t hard to control. So who knows what happened? Maybe somebody at the house got him all worked up, and he just rushed at the officers.”

Four years ago, neighbors said, the four-bedroom home was converted into a halfway house. “The place has been a topic around here for a long time. I mean, (the Amigo House manager) didn’t ask any of us if he could do it,” one neighbor said. “One day they were just there. But they’re all right. They never hurt anybody.”