CUDAHY 998

By John Stacy

During the last year LASD had the contract for the City of Cudahy, before Bell PD took over, there were two serious "Barricaded Suspect" incidents in Cudahy within a couple of months of each other. Both occurred on Elizabeth St., and the locations were about a block apart. Both incidents involved the suspects shooting at Firestone deputies as soon as they arrived on scene, which did not permit time to use a SWAT team.

   The first incident involved a white male, who had placed loaded rifles all around the house he was living in. After the first units arrived, the suspect would crawl around the floor and fire the weapons through the walls, about knee-high. I recall that the other deputies present were angry with one deputy who had performed the classic "John Wayne" maneuver by rushing the house without clearing his tactics with the others first. Eventually, the suspect came out the door, and various deputies fired a number of rounds at him, but I don't remember anyone hitting him. I don't have all the details, as I got there at the tail end. I was informed that the suspect had created the incident because he believed that his wife was dating a Deputy and wanted to shoot one of us. (This can't be true because no deputy would ever knowingly violate the code of marriage!! Excuse me, I'm choking on something, I'll be right back!)

   The second "Barricaded Suspect" incident occurred on Day Shift when a male Mexican had a 415 with someone in an apt house on the north side of Elizabeth St., and capped a .38 round at the victim. (Later, it was determined that the suspect had a .38 rev and a full box of ammo with him) When he realized that Fpk was being notified, he ran to a small house next door and broke in. There was a mother and two small children in the house, and he took the female adult into a front bedroom and began to fire at the first arriving units. Some of the Deputy fired back at the suspect during the approx 20-25 minutes that the incident lasted, but no one came close to him because he was clever enough to go back and forth, from room to room and stand back in the shadows and shoot across the room, out the windows. Everyone was shooting at the window frames, thinking he was next to the windows.

    About 15 minutes into the incident, we all were shocked to see the two small children come walking out the side door of the house, hand-in-hand, while the suspect is still shooting at us. My partner, Dave Martin, and I ran and scooped them up on a dead run and rolled for cover on the other side of the yard. Martin was not very happy with me because after I told him to go the suspect fired six rapid rounds at us.

   When he ran out of ammo, the suspect gave himself up and he was gently taken into custody, in the traditional style. DDA Bob Corrado handled the prosecution at Norwalk Sup Ct, and convinced the judge to give the suspect 16 counts of 217 on a PO, maximum time on each count, to be served consecutively-so I would imagine that he is still upstate somewhere, still serving time.