Two Held After Execution-Style Shooting Witnessed by Officer

Two Los Angeles police officers were driving on patrol Wednesday afternoon when a suspected gang member a block away fatally shot a father of two, execution-style.

At the sound of gunshots, Officer Jose Herrera said, he looked up the street and saw a man in a red shirt standing over the victim, firing at him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Herrera. The killer then jumped in a car with a companion and drove away, he said.

Two women sitting on a porch also had been struck by bullets and wounded. One of the two men is believed to have turned and fired at them deliberately, police Det. Don Richards said.

The suspects were chased and eventually arrested.

The victim, Londell Murdock, 33, was a custodian for the state General Services Department and the father of Londell, 12, and Dante, 3, said his wife, Stephanie Thomas.

He and a friend had gone to a liquor store just north of Vernon and Budlong avenues about 2:15 p.m. for a soda before his swing shift began when two men accosted them. The argument moved outside to the street, where Murdock and his friend tried to escape by running in separate directions.

One gunman chased Murdock, who ran a short distance on Budlong Avenue before a bullet struck him and he fell. The killer then stood over him, firing more shots.

It was at that moment that Officers Herrera and Dale Lopez, both of the 77th Division, happened to pass and Herrera looked up the street as the gunman fired.

Without turning on their sirens, the officers followed the suspects and called to other police cruisers for help.

The pursuit, which began in the neighborhood south of the Santa Monica Freeway and just west of the Harbor Freeway, wound in circles through three police divisions for about 20 minutes before the men crashed into a tree and ran.

As he and Lopez chased them, Herrera said, one suspect reached for his waistband. Herrera didn’t see a gun, but for a moment, he said, it flashed in his mind that he and Lopez were trapped in an alley without cover.

The suspects surrendered to other officers nearby.

Richards, a Southwest Division detective, said Murdock may have been singled out for an offense as simple as the color of his shoes. The victims, he said, “didn’t do anything to provoke this incident.”

Det. Jim Yoshida, the investigator on the case, praised the officers for being “calm and collected” after witnessing the crime. “Sometimes,” he said, “we do get lucky.”

The two women wounded in the shooting were in stable condition Wednesday evening at Martin Luther King-Drew Hospital, police said.

Thomas described her husband as “tall and handsome” and a hard worker. Friends said Murdock was outgoing and a lifelong resident of the neighborhood.

“He loved his kids and always talked about them,” said Will Evans, a longtime friend. “He was 33 years old and he was just working, just working.” He was not a gang member, Evans said.

Thomas’ aunt, Regina Sampson, was one of the first family members to arrive at the scene. Standing in the middle of the street and looking baffled, she wailed, “They kill someone every day, and no one does anything. It happens every day, every day.”