Police Kill Man in Domestic Dispute Call

A man who allegedly threatened Los Angeles police officers with a sharp object that was later determined to be a metal ballpoint pen died early Friday after an officer shot him in the upper body, police said.

In the third similar shooting involving an LAPD officer in the past four months, Daniel Garcia Zarraga, 47, of Van Nuys was fatally wounded outside his apartment in the 7400 block of Sepulveda Boulevard, police said.

Lt. William A. Guerrero, an LAPD spokesman, said the incident began about 12:10 a.m. when Officers Lawrence Koreen and Gonzalo Lara of the department’s Van Nuys Division responded to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon at the apartment complex.

When the officers arrived, Guerrero said, they were met by a woman with visible head injuries who had sought refuge at a neighbor’s apartment. The woman told the two officers she had been attacked by her husband who was armed with a kitchen knife.

The woman, identified in public records as Margarita Zarraga, told the officers her husband was in the couple’s ground-floor apartment near the end of a dark, narrow hallway, Guerrero said.

“The suspect charged out of the apartment armed with a shiny pointed object,” Guerrero said. Lara fired a bean bag round, but Zarraga continued to lunge at the officer, Guerrero said.

“Koreen, fearing that Officer Lara was about to be stabbed and in defense of the officer’s life, fired one round from his service pistol, striking the suspect in the upper body,” Guerrero said.

Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics pronounced Zarraga dead at the scene, Guerrero said. Margarita Zarraga was taken to a local hospital, where she was treated for bruises to her head and body and was released. She could not be reached for comment Friday.

The LAPD’s robbery homicide unit, along with Van Nuys Division detectives, is conducting an investigation of the shooting.

“When you are faced with a combative, armed suspect, you only have a split second to decide what to do,” Guerrero said. “Family disputes and domestic violence calls are among the most difficult to respond to. You go in to keep the peace, and it can turn on you.”

The killing marked the culmination of long-standing domestic violence between the couple, according to a family friend who asked that her name not be used.

“They have fought before,” the woman said in Spanish through an interpreter. “But Margarita didn’t want to have trouble and never called the police. This time she must have been really afraid. This must have been very tough.”

The friend said she had witnessed heated verbal arguments between the Zarragas before. She said, however, that she would leave the apartment before the arguments became physical.

“Margarita told me later that he would get more aggressive after I left,” the woman said. “She had marks on her shoulders, back, arms and a black eye.”

The two women have been friends for six years, live in the same apartment complex and work together as cafeteria and playground aides at Cohasset Street Elementary School, the friend said.

Other neighbors described the Zarragas as a quiet family who have lived in the same apartment for nearly 20 years with their three children, Daniel, 20; Cindy, 18; and Evelyn, 15.

“I am surprised that this happened,” resident Celina Infante said. “They were very quiet, not loud people, but you never know your neighbors.”

The apartment complex manager, known to the tenants as “Chuck” but who declined to give his last name, referred all questions to police.

“I really don’t know what happened,” he said. “It’s a super, super quiet place to live in. We don’t really have any problems.”

In an earlier high-profile incident, a bicycle officer last month fatally shot Margaret Laverne Mitchell, a mentally ill homeless woman, after she allegedly lunged at him with a 12-inch screwdriver.

According to police, the officer and his female partner stopped Mitchell at La Brea Avenue and 4th Street in the Hancock Park area to determine whether a shopping cart she was pushing had been stolen. The Los Angeles Police Commission is now reviewing the May 21 shooting.

Gus Henry Woods, 56, was shot to death March 2 after police said he threatened officers with a metal rod that authorities said resembled a weapon.

Woods, who previously spent time at a mental-health facility in Ventura, had been using the rod to scratch his 1978 Fiat coupe.

When four officers attempted to detain him, authorities said, Woods threatened to kill them. Police said Woods raised the rod over his head, ignored the officers’ orders to stop and was shot once in the chest with an officer’s semiautomatic service pistol.

Robbery homicide and West Valley detectives are investigating that shooting.

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Times correspondent Rob O’Neil contributed to this report.