Gun battle with LA police leaves one man dead, another injured

Gun battle with LA police leaves one man dead, another injured

Thursday, March 10, 2005

(03-10) 18:37 PST Los Angeles (AP) --

Police were investigating whether two men who fired on police multiple times during a slow-speed chase early Thursday had set out to engage officers in a gun battle.

Police Chief William Bratton said during a press conference that investigators found 500 rounds of live ammunition, 20 casings from spent rounds and a ski mask inside the vehicle. The crime scene extended along 35 blocks in South Los Angeles and numerous spent casings were found along the chase route, Bratton said.

The driver, 20-year-old Ryan Vargas, was wounded when police returned fire and was in critical condition at a local hospital, said Officer Kristi Sandoval, a police spokeswoman. His passenger, whose name has not been released, was found dead in the car after the shoot-out.

No officers were injured.

The incident began around 2:30 a.m. when police tried to stop the driver of a dark-colored Chevrolet Blazer on suspicion of drunk driving, Sandoval said.

Officers were led on a five-mile chase through South Los Angeles by the SUV that made frequent U-turns. Shots were fired from the passenger window at officers, she said.

Police Lt. Paul Vernon told KCAL-TV that preliminary information suggested the suspects had sought out police for a shoot-out.

"Both these suspects planned out earlier in the night to load up their car with weapons and ammunition and engage police sometime during the night," Vernon said. "That is the information we're getting."

Sandoval later said investigators had not been able to corroborate those reports, in part because they had not been able to interview the critically injured Vargas.

"Without being able to talk to the surviving suspect, we don't know how accurate that is," she said, added it hadn't been ruled out.

At one point, officers saw beer cans or fireworks thrown from the car windows, Sandoval said.

The chase ended when the car crashed into a gate. After a standoff, Vargas was pulled from the car by a SWAT team, she said.

Police said they recovered a 10-gauge, .22-caliber Ruger rifle with a modified stock and multiple 10-gauge magazines from the car. They also found ammunition for guns of different calibers but didn't find the weapons, she said.