Woman Is Killed as Police Wait Outside

A Long Beach woman was stabbed to death Monday even as police, who had come to search her backyard for a possible intruder, stood outside her front door waiting for her to let them into the yard, Long Beach police said.

Lynn Schockner, 50, was found dead outside the back door of her home in the 1100 block of Andrews Drive shortly after 11 a.m.

She was discovered by the officers, police said, after they had broken into the home when another officer in a nearby alley radioed that he had just caught a man climbing a fence out of Schockner’s yard.

Nicholas Harvey, 22, of Port Hueneme was arrested on suspicion of murder after being caught in the alley with a knife and jewelry, Sgt. David Cannan said.

The incident began when police received a phone call from a neighbor of Cannan’s in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood, police said. The neighbor reported that a man had gotten out of a dark sedan and seemed to be loitering in the area after the car had left.

As one officer went to the alley near Schockner’s backyard, Cannan said, two other officers checked the gate to the yard and, finding it locked, knocked on the front door.

“She answered the door and she had with her a ... mid-size dog that was very vocal,” Cannan said.

The officers asked if she would unlock the gate so that they could search her yard for a possible intruder. She told them yes, Cannan said, and went back inside, closing her front door apparently because the dog was barking at the officers.

“The officers waited there a few moments,” Cannan said. “And then it became a few moments too long.”

When the officer in the alley radioed that he had caught a man climbing the fence, the officers broke into the house and found Schockner stabbed and apparently dead. Investigators believe that she had gone to unlock the gate when she was attacked, Cannan said.

The slaying of the woman as they waited at her door “hit the officers so hard we brought some counselors out,” Cannan said.