Deputies Kill Man Wielding Garden Tool

Three Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies fatally shot an unidentified man who charged one of them with a rake Thursday in Lancaster, authorities said.

The shooting occurred after a two-hour car chase that ended about 1:30 a.m. in the parking lot of the Antelope Valley Medical Center, Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Burt said.

The rake-wielding man was shot several times in the head and chest, Burt said. Upon examining his body, investigators found that he had used the short-handled, three-pronged garden tool to slash his wrists as he was being pursued, he said.

The chase, in which speeds did not exceed 40 m.p.h., began in Lancaster when the man nearly struck a sheriff’s patrol car from behind at a stoplight. The deputy in the patrol car noticed that the man was driving with his bright headlights on and tried to stop him, but the man sped away, Burt said. During the chase, the man ran at least 40 red lights and tried to ram one of the pursuing patrol cars, he said.

Crashed Truck

At the hospital parking lot, the man crashed the Toyota pickup truck he was driving into a wall near the emergency room door.

As a deputy approached the truck, the man jumped out and “started running at the deputy with the weapon in his right hand raised above his head and screaming,” Deputy Dan Cox said. The deputy drew his service pistol and told the man to stop, but the man was rapidly closing in, Cox said.

“Having no time to retreat, the deputy fired,” Cox said, “as did the two backup deputies who only arrived moments earlier.”

The names of the three deputies who fired were not disclosed. They are 7, 8 and 22-year veterans of the Sheriff’s Department, he said.

Investigators believe that the shooting was justified, Burt said.

“The deputies were defending themselves. . . . He was literally running with the thing raised at the deputy,” Burt said. “Despite the orders to stop and drop this weapon he had in his hand, all those admonitions had no effect on him.”

The rake was “about the size of a small shovel” with a 10-inch wooden handle and sharp prongs about six to seven inches long, Burt said.

Officials were continuing attempts to identify the man.