2 LAPD Detectives, Suspect Recovering From Shootout

Two Los Angeles police detectives and a suspected robber continued their recovery Wednesday from gunshot wounds as Ventura County sheriff’s deputies tried to reconstruct the Newbury Park shootout that injured the men and killed another suspect.

The injured detectives from the LAPD’s Special Investigations Section had watched two men rob a Newbury Park liquor store Monday night, then moved in to arrest them.

When suspect Robert Cunningham, 26, of Reseda, began shooting, police said, detectives returned fire, wounding him and killing his accomplice, Daniel Soly, 27, of West Hills.

Cunningham’s condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious, but he remains in the intensive care unit, said a spokeswoman at St. John’s Pleasant Valley Medical Center. Ventura County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Holmes said his office may charge Cunningham with murder by week’s end for his role in the events leading to Soly’s death.

The LAPD has refused to identify its two detectives who were wounded in the shootout because it would damage their ability to do undercover work for the SIS, said Lt. John Dunkin, a department spokesman.

The detectives, ages 40 and 49, were upgraded from serious to fair condition and moved from an intensive care unit to a medical floor, said Kris Carraway, a spokeswoman at Los Robles Regional Medical Center. They remain under police guard, she said.

The LAPD has launched a routine internal investigation of the shooting that Dunkin said will take three or four months to finish.

And Ventura County major crimes detectives must sift through dozens of interviews and pieces of evidence before making a ruling on the shooting, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. William Wade.

Criminologists will aim laser beams through bullet holes in the suspects’ car and one detective’s car to determine who fired the shots that killed Soly and wounded the others, he said.

Wade said police have interviewed Cunningham, but he declined to say what Cunningham told them.