Gunman on roof in South L.A. shot, wounded by elite LAPD crime detail

Officers in the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite Metropolitan Division, recently deployed to the city’s most violent areas, shot a man armed with a gun on a roof in South L.A., authorities said.

Officers with the LAPD’s crime suppression detail were patrolling in the 5800 block of Broadway before midnight Tuesday night when they tried to stop a pedestrian, said Officer Liliana Preciado.

RELATED: Man shot, killed in confrontation with police in Venice, LAPD says

The officers are part of a select unit within the LAPD that Chief Charlie Beck recently deployed to try to suppress an increase in violent crime.

When they tried to stop the pedestrian, a man in his 20s, about 11:50 p.m., he ran, Preciado said. Police officials did not immediately say why officers had tried to stop him.

Officers briefly lost sight of the man but spotted him again moments later on a second-story roof pointing a gun at them, Preciado said.

The officers shot him, but he managed to run off. Officers set up a perimeter and eventually cornered the gunman near 59th Place and Broadway, where he surrendered.

Preciado said the man was wounded in the torso and taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition.

No officers were injured in the incident. They were not wearing body cameras during the incident, police said.

The shooting was the third involving LAPD officers since late Tuesday. Across town in Venice, police fatally shot a man identified as a transient after a struggle outside local bars. Police said the man was unarmed but had gotten into a physical altercation with officers when he was shot.

About 7:30 a.m. in the San Fernando Valley, officers shot at a man during a parole compliance check in the 12000 block of Van Nuys Boulevard. No one was hit by the gunfire and the man was taken into custody, police said.

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