Man Suspected of Trespassing Killed by Police

A Los Angeles police officer Monday shot and killed a man who police said pulled a rifle on officers investigating a complaint that the gunman was trespassing in a house from which he had recently been evicted.

Officers answering a report of a burglary at the house in the 7400 block of Oakdale Avenue discovered a broken rear window and saw a man inside the house, said Officer Charlotte Broughton, an LAPD spokeswoman.

Officers ordered the man out of the house, but he did not respond, Broughton said. When they attempted to rout him with pepper spray, he pointed a rifle in their direction and one of the officers fired a single shot from his weapon, striking the victim in the upper body, she said. The man was pronounced dead at a local hospital, she said.

Police declined to name the dead man, but a longtime neighbor who was questioned by detectives identified him as Joseph Viviano.

The neighbor, Preston Bingham, said Viviano, 49, paid him a visit Sunday night.

“He was kind of down in the dumps. He’d lost the house . . . he was staying there when he wasn’t supposed to be,” Bingham said.

He said Viviano hadn’t held a steady job since he was laid off when the General Motors plant in Panorama City shut down in 1992. Viviano had suffered several tragedies in recent years, including the loss of both of his parents to cancer and the death of one of his sons, Bingham said.

Pat Foster, another neighbor, said Viviano was a chronic drinker prone to outbursts of violence.

She said she called the police on him last year after he threatened her children with a rifle.

“He’d tell them, ‘Don’t walk in front of my house or I’ll blow you away,’ ” she said.

When officers arrived to investigate, she said, Viviano repeatedly screamed at them: “Just shoot me. Just shoot me.”

Referring to the fatal shooting Monday, she added: “It was building up to this.”

Police declined to name the officers involved in the shooting, which will undergo routine review by detectives from the Robbery Homicide Division.

Bingham, who said he had known Viviano for 42 years and felt some sympathy for him, did not blame police for his neighbor’s death.

“You can’t fault the police,” he said, noting that Viviano had given officers no choice when he allegedly aimed a weapon at them. “Sometimes they wait too long [to react], and that’s how they get killed.”