LAPD Officer Seriously Wounded in Shooting

A Los Angeles police officer was shot at least three times and seriously wounded Saturday night near the South-Central Los Angeles intersection that gained notoriety as a flash point of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

The 24-year-old officer, who was not immediately identified, was wounded in the left elbow, buttocks and thigh and grazed on the head in the 9:20 p.m. shooting on Florence Avenue, just half a block east of Normandie Avenue, authorities said. The officer was listed in serious condition at St. Francis Medical Center.

“It doesn’t sound like anything life-threatening. He is conscious and talking,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Bob Collis said.

Details of the shooting remained sketchy late Saturday, but officers at the scene said the shooting apparently followed a routine traffic stop.

All available officers and about 30 patrol cars from the LAPD’s South Bureau rushed to the scene. The black-and-white police cars jammed the intersection and closed off streets for several blocks while the investigation was conducted.

“We have an officer that’s been shot. . . . Information is slow in coming in,” a police spokesman said.

It was at Florence and Normandie that a group of men beat trucker Reginald O. Denny at the start of the 1992 riots. Looting and arson eventually spread citywide following the not-guilty verdicts in the Simi Valley criminal trial of four officers accused of beating Rodney G. King.

Just last week, one of the men convicted in the Denny beating, Henry Keith Watson, was sentenced to seven years in prison for violating his probation in that case.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter said Watson violated his parole when found in possession of cocaine by Los Angeles police six months ago. The prosecutor said officers had found Watson drinking in the front yard of the mother of his former co-defendant, Damien Williams, who is serving a 10-year prison term.