The gunman who ambushed two Los Angeles County deputies should be executed if the deputies do not survive, President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday.
As of Sunday afternoon, it was not clear whether police had identified the suspect who, according to a surveillance video, walked up to the passenger’s side of the parked car the deputies were in and fired several times at close range.
The incident took place at about 7 p.m. local time Saturday near a train station in Compton, the Los Angeles Times reported. Both deputies are now expected to survive.
“If they die, fast trial death penalty for the killer. Only way to stop this!” the president tweeted Sunday morning in response to the shooting.
If they die, fast trial death penalty for the killer. Only way to stop this! https://t.co/K3sKh28GjX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2020
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“Animals that must be hit hard!” Trump tweeted as he shared a surveillance video of the incident, in which a gunman fired multiple rounds into the vehicle.
WARNING: The video below contains graphic violence that some viewers may find disturbing:
Animals that must be hit hard! https://t.co/zrOd9ZUl8o
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2020
On Sunday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the deputies’ condition was a “double miracle,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Citing sources it did not name, the Times reported that “at least one of the deputies was shot in the face and the other in the head.”
Police said one of the deputies is a 31-year-old mother of a 6-year-old boy. The other is a 24-year-old man. Both were sworn in just 14 months ago, according to Villanueva.
Villanueva said Saturday that one of the deputies called the gunman a “dark-skinned male,” according to Fox News.
The deputies had been listed in critical condition since the shooting, but ABC News Radio reporter Alex Stone tweeted Sunday afternoon that both appeared to be improving.
“A senior official in the LA County Sheriff’s Department tells @abc that both deputies shot last night are now stable. The female deputy was shot in the jaw and arms. She is critical but stable. The male deputy was shot in the forehead and in an arm and a hand. Both are stable,” Stone wrote.
A senior official in the LA County Sheriff’s Department tells @abc that both deputies shot last night are now stable. The female deputy was shot in the jaw and arms. She is critical but stable. The male deputy was shot in the forehead and in an arm and a hand. Both are stable.
— Alex Stone (@astoneabcnews) September 13, 2020
The shooting reflects the deadly reality of being a police officer in 2020, former Las Vegas police Lt. Randy Sutton said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
Do you believe the shooting of these two deputies in Los Angeles reflects a war on police in America?
“This is a reality check for America,” said Sutton, who founded The Wounded Blue, a nonprofit organization that provides aid for injured and disabled officers. “There is a war on cops. It truly exists, and the fact that this individual was so emboldened as to walk up to this patrol car and open fire and ambush these two deputies is a stark reminder of that fact.”
The hospital where the wounded deputies were taken became the scene of more conflict, as anti-police demonstrators tried to block the entrance and, according to one witness, even enter the building, KABC-TV reported.
To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling “We hope they die” referring to 2 LA Sheriff’s ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through.
— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) September 13, 2020
“They were saying death to the police, kill the police and they were using all types of curse words and derogatory terms about the police, just provoking our police officers,” Bishop Juan Carlos Mendez with Churches in Action said.
“[It’s] unacceptable behavior because the hospital should be a sanctuary, we should leave hospitals alone.”
Sutton said the protesters exhibited “some of the most disgusting human behavior that I could possibly imagine.”
“Think what kind of human being it takes to show up where two officers are fighting for their lives and say something as horrendous as, ‘We hope you die,’” Sutton said.
“This is behavior that has become all too common in America, and this is the evidence of the war on cops.”
During an event in Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump gave a preview of what he said will happen when authorities find the man who shot the deputies.
“We are looking for that person and when we find that person, we are going to get much faster with our courts and we have to get much tougher with our sentencing,” the president said, according to a White House media pool report.
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