Prosecutors Wednesday were expected to announce criminal charges in an attack on two LA County Sheriff’s Department deputies who were shot while seated in a patrol car at a transit station in Compton.
Officials declined to discuss the nature of the charges ahead of a news conference, but electronic court and jail records showed new entries late Tuesday in the profile of Deonte Lee Murray, who was arrested Sept. 15 after a stakeout, car chase, and search in Lynwood that Sheriff Alex Villanueva initially said was unrelated to the deputy attack case.
Murray, 36, was charged that week with a Sept. 1 carjacking and shooting and NBC4 reported that the surveillance that led to that arrest was part of the investigation into the deputy shooting.
Murray pleaded not guilty in the carjacking case and was expected to return to court in late October for a hearing. The court and jail records showed he had been suddenly ordered to court in Compton Wednesday morning without an indication of the reason for the hearing.
The two deputies were shot Sept. 12 while they were seated in a marked patrol car parked at a transit station in Compton.
One of the two, a 31-year-old woman, was shot in the face. Her partner, a 24-year-old man, was shot in the upper body. Both survived and are recovering at home.
Multiple law enforcement sources told NBC4 the deputy shooting investigation had almost immediately focused on two Compton-area street gangs.
Security video from the transit station showed a man wearing dark clothing approach the passenger side of the patrol car, raise a handgun, and fire numerous rounds through the front passenger window at the deputies. The gunman then turned and ran from the scene, and at least one witness said a dark Mercedes-Benz with a second person driving served as a getaway car, according to sheriff’s officials.
Last week, sheriff’s detectives and members of the Special Enforcement Bureau, its SWAT team, served search warrants at a home near the location of the Sept. 15 stakeout that led to Murray’s arrest as part of the investigation into the attack on the deputies.
That home was also the scene of a standoff Sept. 10 when deputies from the Sheriff’s Department’s Operation Safe Streets unit in Norwalk served a search warrant and a man inside, later identified as Samuel Herrera, Jr., was shot and killed during a standoff with deputies.
Source: NBC Los Angeles
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