Police Kill 2 in West Valley Confrontations

In a rare pair of fatal shootings by police in the west San Fernando Valley, LAPD officers killed two motorists who allegedly tried to injure them in separate incidents Saturday night. One driver was shot by an officer who clung to a car as it raced along Ventura Boulevard at up to 70 mph, police said.

The names of those killed were unavailable late Sunday as authorities tried to notify their relatives. Both slayings were under investigation by LAPD’s Officer-Involved Shooting Unit.

The Ventura Boulevard incident began in Tarzana when two officers confronted a 43-year-old man apparently rummaging through a construction site near Ventura and Calvin Avenue, Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman Lori Taylor said.

As officers questioned him, “the man became agitated and ran” to his vehicle, Taylor said.

In an attempt to stop the man from driving off, LAPD Officer Geno Collelo, 32, got partly inside the car. But the man accelerated west on Ventura, with Collelo hanging on desperately, Taylor said.

Witnesses told police the vehicle hit speeds of up to 70 mph as it swerved from one side of the street to the other, apparently trying to shake off Collelo, police said.

“As we understand it, he was hanging somehow onto the outside and was eventually able to pull himself in as the man accelerated,” Taylor said.

She said Collelo shot the driver about 11:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Taylor said she didn’t know whether the driver was armed, or whether his car was moving or had already crashed at the time he was killed.

The vehicle struck a phone booth and a taco shop on the boulevard, police said.

Collelo, a two-year veteran, was hospitalized but reported in good condition Sunday night, said officials, who declined to describe his injuries.

Two hours before that incident, police killed a 24-year-old man with a barrage of bullets as he allegedly tried to ram them with his car in Northridge.

That shooting took place after police, responding to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon, saw a vehicle leaving the area at a high rate of speed, said LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba.

*

After pursuing the driver for 40 minutes, officers called off the chase due to danger to bystanders, said Alba. But an LAPD helicopter continued to track the vehicle until it drove into the 8600 block of Wystone Avenue, a dead-end street outside the Park Parthenia apartment complex.

When officers arrived and blockaded the car, its driver tried unsuccessfully to ram through a wrought-iron gate at the complex, Alba said.

The driver then backed into a police car, injuring an officer inside, and kept going toward a nearby group of officers. Five officers opened fire, killing the man, said Alba.

Police said they did not know how many bullets were fired, but residents of the area interviewed Sunday said they heard 25 to 30 shots.

“It sounded like machine-gun fire,” said 20-year-old Miguel Angel Robles.

Several residents said that after the shooting they counted about 36 chalk marks on the ground, indicating where empty shell casings had landed.

One man who said he witnessed the shooting said police did not give the victim enough time to surrender.

“The guy didn’t have a chance,” said the man, who refused to give his name. “It seemed like [police] wanted to finish him off with shots.”

Two youngsters who live around the corner from the apartments said they saw one officer yell something at the victim. But “the man didn’t say anything back,” said 9-year-old Emmanuel Lopez.

Instead, “he took off and tried to knock the fence down.”

When the man couldn’t knock the gate down, he tried to get past the patrol cars, said Lopez.

“That’s when the police gave him a shot and the man died,” Lopez said.

*

Police identified those involved in the shooting as Officer Carlos Barrios, 24, a two-year veteran of the department; Michael Kilpatrick, 28, a seven-year veteran; Russell Graybill, 28, a six-year veteran; Sgt. Isadore Guttierrez, 45, a nine-year veteran; and Timothy Toth, 39, a five-year veteran.

Officers said that though officer-involved shootings are rare, the death of two suspects at police hands within two hours in the same geographic area is especially unusual.

“It’s just one of those freaky things, the kind of thing that sometimes comes in spurts, and makes the job so dangerous,” said Sgt. Dan Maestro.