Officer Kills Man After 3 Are Shot at Sports Arena Concert

It was billed as a Valentine’s Super Love Jam. But as music lovers grooved to the soulful sounds of an Isley Brothers concert in the Sports Arena late Friday, a Los Angeles police officer killed a 24-year-old man alleged to have wounded three people by a concession stand.

Authorities had not determined by Saturday the reason that the concession area was sprayed with semiautomatic gunfire.

The gunshots were fired shortly before 11 p.m., sending frightened concert-goers screaming and scrambling for cover and leaving one of the wounded in serious condition.

“It was chaotic,” said one Los Angeles Police Department official.

The killing was the first by an LAPD officer since the district attorney’s office reinstated a highly touted team earlier this month to investigate police shootings across the county.

The “roll-out” team is intended to provide independent review of police shootings but was discontinued in 1995. It was reestablished amid the widening corruption scandal involving anti-gang officers from LAPD’s Rampart Division.

A deputy district attorney and two investigators went to the Sports Arena, said a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

Police said it was unclear whether the three people who were wounded were the intended targets in the shooting.

Officer Adrian Chin was inside the arena when the shooting began, police said. Chin was on a routine security detail assigned to work outside the complex, but had gone inside to use the restroom.

“When he came out, he saw the guy shooting,” an LAPD source said.

Chin was in uniform and identified himself as an officer, police said. He then fired one round at the gunman.

The attacker reportedly turned and pointed his handgun at Chin, 25, who has been on the force for four years and is assigned to the Southeast Division. The officer fired once more and struck the suspect. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.

The concert was stopped minutes after the shooting, about an hour before it was scheduled to end.

The suspected gunman was identified by the coroner’s office as Oscar Rene Figueroa of Paramount. His immediate family could not be reached Saturday for comment.

Two of the victims--a man and a woman--were treated at local hospitals and released. Officials did not disclose their names.

The third victim was a man who was hit in the stomach, the LAPD source said. The man, whose name was not released, was taken to County-USC Medical Center and was listed in serious but stable condition Saturday, a hospital spokesman said.