Man in Domestic Dispute Killed After Threatening Deputies

Sheriff’s deputies shot a Duarte man to death in front of his three screaming children after he allegedly beat his wife and lunged at a deputy while holding a foot-long knife, authorities said Monday.

Michael Allen Lambert, 32, was shot several times Sunday evening by deputies as one officer tried to rescue the boys from a bedroom in the family’s condominium, investigators said.

Moments after deputies fired at Lambert, neighbors said, the boys, ages 1, 5 and 7, were carried outside, the older ones screaming: “Dad’s shot! Dad’s shot!”

Noel Haver-Habib, a neighbor who had called the Sheriff’s Department, said deputies should have given Lambert “a little more time” to surrender. “Now we have three children without a father,” she said.

Although none of the boys were physically injured, Haver-Habib, a nurse, said that seeing their father shot to death will probably scar their memories for life. Bloodstains on the bedroom carpet where Lambert fell, inches from his children, and bullet holes in an interior wall and in a glass pane of a door were mute reminders Monday of the bloody events of the night before.

When deputies arrived at the complex in the 800 block of Cinnamon Lane shortly after 8 p.m. Sunday, they found Lambert’s wife outside the two-story condominium. She told deputies that Lambert, her estranged husband, had beaten her and was now inside with their children, authorities said.

Deputies surrounded the building.

Armed with a large kitchen knife, Lambert was in the boys’ bedroom with the children, “who were crying hysterically,” said Deputy Debra Glafkides, a department spokeswoman.

As deputies tried to calm Lambert while awaiting the arrival of a Special Weapons and Tactics Team and crisis negotiators, he abruptly left the children’s bedroom, leaving his sons alone, Glafkides said.

One deputy climbed through a bedroom window, planning to rescue the children, she said. As the deputy entered the bedroom, Lambert ran back into the room, “yelling as he charged at the deputy with a 12-inch kitchen knife poised in his hand,” Glafkides said.

“The deputy in the room and two others at the window fired at the man from their duty weapons, striking him several times,” she said.

Lambert was pronounced dead at the scene, and investigators recovered the knife, Glafkides said. None of the deputies was injured.

Authorities said Lambert and his wife, longtime residents at the complex, had been separated since January, and he was visiting his family when the incident occurred.

Haver-Habib said Lambert had been at the condominium for the last few days and was assembling a child’s bed while apparently intoxicated when he began arguing with his 30-year-old wife over her use of the telephone. A box for a child’s bed still lay outside the condominium’s door Monday.

“I called 911 after I heard all of them screaming. . . . He bit her several times,” said Haver-Habib, pointing to a trail of blood on a walkway.

Haver-Habib said that although the condominium complex is generally quiet, deputies have removed Lambert, whom she described as a heavy drinker, from the unit before. All the deputies involved in the shooting have been assigned to desk duty, Glafkides said. The shooting was the second in a month involving deputies from the Sheriff’s Department Temple City station.