Crowd Throws Rocks at Deputies Outside Club

A rock-throwing crowd attacked sheriff’s deputies early Friday as they arrested a television actor and his companions outside a West Hollywood nightclub, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

Omar Miles Gooding, 19, a supporting actor on the situation comedy “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper,” and two other men were arrested on suspicion of possessing a loaded firearm in public and receiving stolen goods, said Deputy Mark Bailey.

While Gooding and his 21-year-old friends, Howard Lundy and Kerstin Brown, were being taken into custody shortly after 2 a.m., several people in a crowd of about 100 standing in front of the Casablanca nightclub began throwing rocks and yelling at the deputies.

One rock broke the back window of a patrol car, but no deputies were injured, officials said.

They said they do not believe that the violent reaction was connected to the arrest of the actor or his companions but was prompted simply by the deputies’ presence.

“It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, not organized,” said Sgt. Doreen Thigpen, watch sergeant at the West Hollywood station. “[The crowd] was milling around there, the black-and-whites pulled up, and the people in the crowd must have felt like they were anonymous.”

No one in the crowd was arrested. Deputies placed Gooding, Lundy and Brown in the patrol cars and left the scene, Bailey said.

When officials returned later, the crowd had dispersed.

The incident was unusual in West Hollywood, where sheriff’s deputies are highly supported by the residents and businesses, Thigpen said.

Deputies had been responding to an anonymous call that the occupants of a black Ford Bronco with tinted windows and chrome wheels were armed with a handgun and were cruising Sunset Boulevard, Bailey said. Deputies spotted a vehicle matching the description and pulled it over in the 8200 block of Sunset near the Casablanca.

Inside the vehicle, deputies found the three suspects and three loaded handguns, Bailey said. The serial number had been removed from one of the guns, indicating that it may have been stolen, he said.

Gooding, Lundy and Brown were booked at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station. Bail was set at $20,000 each.