Police seal off area in manhunt

Police surrounded a neighborhood in South Los Angeles late Tuesday in a search for a man suspected in the beating death of his 6-year-old stepson.

Shortly before midnight, officers had sealed off a several-block area around Avalon Boulevard and 90th Street and were using dogs in an effort to track down Marcas Fisher, 36, according to Officer Karen Rayner, a police spokeswoman.

Fisher is a suspect in the death of his stepson, Dae’von Bailey, whose battered body was found last Thursday on the floor of a house in South Los Angeles. The boy had been the subject of roughly a dozen calls to Los Angeles County’s child abuse hotline, and authorities have said his body showed signs of trauma that had been inflicted over an extended period of time, suggesting systematic abuse.

Rayner said police received a call about 8 p.m. Tuesday reporting a sighting of Fisher. Officers pursued him on foot, lost him, but sealed off the area where he was believed to be hiding.

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com