Woman Murdered At Baldwin Park Home; Suspect Arrested After Lengthy Standoff
BALDWIN PARK (CBSLA) – A man was arrested early Thursday morning following a nearly five-hour SWAT standoff at a Baldwin Park home after a woman was murdered at the same property the night before.
At around 9:40 p.m., Baldwin Park police were dispatched to a report of a man attacking someone at a home in 3000 block of Mangum Street, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
They arrived on scene to find a 70-year-old woman beaten to death with a stick or a hammer, and two other people hurt, the sheriff's department said.
Investigators later learned that the suspect, a 27-year-old man, had been heard breaking windows, so his mother and some friends came to help him. The woman killed is believed to be a friend of the suspect's mother.
The deceased woman was not immediately identified. The two other victims, a man and a woman, were treated and released from a local hospital for undisclosed injuries.
On arrival, meanwhile, officers were informed that the suspect lived in a rear house on the property and had barricaded himself inside the home, the sheriff's department reports.
An LASD SWAT team and crisis negotiators were called in. He surrendered just after 2:30 a.m. after SWAT officers used tear gas and also sent in a K-9. His name was not immediately released.
"The female was actually saying, 'where's my child, where's my child, where's my child,'" a neighbor told CBSLA. "Maybe like five minutes later, all officers went inside, basically in riot gear to a barricaded suspect. We did hear two large bangs."
The circumstances of the killing, a possible motive and the relationship of the suspect to the victims were not confirmed.
Meanwhile, as deputies were responding to the killing, an LASD patrol vehicle struck and injured a bicyclist about a mile from the crime scene at Garvey and Francisquito avenues. The bicyclist was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the sheriff's department said.