Police Fatally Shoot Man They Were Told Had a Knife

A man who allegedly threatened Los Angeles police officers in Van Nuys 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 somewhat similar shooting involving an LAPD officer in the last four months, Daniel Garcia Zarraga, 47, of Van Nuys, was fatally wounded in front of 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 victim told Koreen and Lara that 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 that her husband was in their 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, and Lara fired a beanbag round, but Zarraga continued to lunge at the officer.

“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.

LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division and Van Nuys division detectives are conducting an investigation of the killing.

“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 was the culmination of long-standing domestic violence between the Zarragas, 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.

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

Other neighbors described the Zarragas as a quiet family that has lived in the same apartment for nearly 20 years. The couple have three children: Daniel, 20; Cindy, 18; and Evelyn, 15.

“They were very quiet, not loud people, but you never know your neighbors,” resident Celina Infant said.

In an earlier, closely examined 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 was stolen. The Los Angeles Police Commission is reviewing the May 21 incident.

And Gus Henry Woods, 56, was shot to death March 2 after he threatened city police officers with a metal rod that police said looked like 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 he raised the rod over his head, ignored the officers’ orders to stop and was shot once in the chest by an officer’s semiautomatic service pistol.

Times correspondent Rob O’Neil contributed to this report.