Police Release Details of Party Shooting

The Los Angeles Police Department on Monday rallied around an officer who shot and killed a man at a weekend Halloween costume party, saying that he too was a victim of a tragic set of circumstances.

Authorities say Anthony Dwain Lee was pointing an authentic-looking rubber replica of a .357 magnum semi-automatic Desert Eagle at police when he was shot. It was not clear where Lee, an up-and-coming actor, got the replica.

The officer, Tarriel Hopper, fired nine shots at Lee, striking him several times early Saturday as Lee stood in a ground-floor bedroom of a Benedict Canyon mansion known as the Castle.

Hopper, 27, was investigating a noise complaint and was making his way through the backyard of the home when he saw Lee pointing the gun at him through a window, police said.

“When you get something that realistic, I don’t think any of you . . . would ask the officer to take an extra second to determine whether it was rubber gun,” Police Chief Bernard C. Parks told reporters at an afternoon news conference, standing next to a real Desert Eagle and the replica police said Lee had when he was shot.

The two were almost indistinguishable, except for a slight glint from the real metal gun.

Such cases, Parks said, “You put an officer in a very tough situation, in a split second to try to determine whether it’s a replica or a real gun. I think that’s the real tragedy.”

Lee, Parks added, had the gun “pointed in a very direct location” at Hopper, and from close range, when the officer unholstered his service weapon and opened fire.

The chief said Hopper had no time to shout a warning: “The shooting occurred so instantaneously that the officers had no chance to . . . even to make an audible sound,” Parks said.

Hopper’s partner, Natalie Humphreys, may have been behind him, and did not see the shooting, police said.

Police records and sources indicated that Saturday’s incident was the first time Hopper, a three-year veteran, has been involved in a shooting.

Hopper is devastated by the incident, according to Deputy Chief David Kalish, commanding officer of the LAPD’s West Bureau, which includes the Benedict Canyon party site.

“I personally spoke to the officer and . . . he felt his life was in danger,” Kalish said. “He felt like he was about to be shot with a semiautomatic pistol.”

The comments by Parks and other officials marked the first detailed response by the LAPD to the shooting, which has drawn international attention and second-guessing upon the beleaguered LAPD as it struggles with the unrelated Rampart officer corruption scandal and a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department over its use of force and other problems.

The LAPD disclosures were based on a preliminary inquiry, and Parks and others stressed that they had just begun a thorough and aggressive internal investigation.

One top police official who will be investigating the shooting said: “Officers are trained that, if someone points a gun at you, you fire in immediate defense of life. But it’s very easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, and that is something we have to avoid doing.”

Despite the disclosures, several major questions remained unanswered, including whether Lee was in costume, how he was acting at the time of the shooting, where his wounds were and how far he was from Hopper when he was shot.

Already, a district attorney’s team is investigating the shooting, as required, to determine whether the officers violated any criminal laws. The LAPD’s inspector general, Jeffrey Eglash, is also investigating.

The disclosures offered a marked contrast to descriptions of the face-off between Lee and Hopper from people at the party.

Critics of the police, including friends of Lee and neighbors of the party house, question whether Hopper and Humphreys helped precipitate the shooting by going into the backyard instead of waiting by the front door for the hosts of the party.

On Monday, City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg echoed those concerns.

Goldberg, an outspoken critic of the LAPD, called on Eglash and the Police Commission to launch thorough investigations into the tactics used by Hopper and Humphreys.

“If the call [to police] was that someone was being raped, you might understand things could happen badly,” Goldberg said. “But this was a complaint about noise. No one should be dead.”

Parks sought to deflect such criticism, saying officers generally use common sense in dealing with noise complaints, and that in this case, Hopper and Humphreys sought out the hosts inside the home before being directed to the rear of the house by partygoers.

On Monday, police repeatedly stressed the dangers of carrying replicas of weapons that could be mistaken for the real thing.

“We want to make people aware of the dangers of carrying [gun] replicas like this, something that looks so real,” said Lt. Horace Frank, an LAPD spokesman.

Police officials said Lee is far from the first victim of such replica guns; dozens of people nationwide have been injured or killed by police officers who thought they were brandishing real weapons.

Police officials also said that despite the seemingly innocent nature of the party, the officers were correct in not letting their guard down.

In the last three years, two LAPD officers have been killed investigating noisy parties.

Those cases were in far more dangerous, gang-infested parts of town, but they underscored the fact that any situation can turn potentially lethal in a heartbeat, officials said.

D.P. Van Blaricom, a nationally recognized expert in police tactics, said Monday that disturbance calls are regarded as some of the most dangerous situations police officers can respond to.

Officers “just don’t know what they are going to find” when they arrive at parties and loud gatherings, said Van Blaricom, noting that officers called to the scene of large parties sometimes find themselves confronted by crowds that can quickly get out of control.

Van Blaricom, a former police chief, speculated that the officers in Saturday morning’s shooting, uncertain of the size and tone of the party, may have gone to the side of the house to figure out what they might encounter inside.

“They may have been scouting out the scene to see the size of the party and if they might need to call for backup,” said Van Blaricom.

Although Van Blaricom added that the shooting would probably be considered justified if Hopper felt he was in danger of being killed or injured, he wondered whether the officer could have dived for cover. “I just wonder what the officers were thinking,” said Van Blaricom. “But that’s something we just can’t know now.”

Monday night, at a candlelight vigil in memory of Lee outside the West Los Angeles police station, about 200 people gathered around a makeshift Buddhist shrine covered with white candles.

“His Buddhist philosophy was about the individual transformation of humankind,” said Mirron Willis, 35, a fellow actor and Buddhist. “He probably would want to have everyone start chanting.”

At that, low chanting filled the night air.

Several people emphasized that they were not there to lay blame, but to celebrate Lee’s life.

“I know that Anthony would be extremely sympathetic to the person who injured him. I know he would understand the complexities, the accidents and the ironies,” said Stuart Duckworth, 52, of Silver Lake.

At the vigil, Capt. Mike Hillmann said police standing by “wanted to make sure that we, as a Police Department, gave them the opportunity to grieve with dignity. You know, what happened was a tragedy, and there are many victims in this case.”

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* PARTIAL LAPD ACQUITTAL

A judge acquits one of four LAPD officers in the Rampart trial of two counts of perjury. B1