A man shot and killed the mother of his 17-month-old child during a custody exchange in front of a Southern California police station and was arrested several hours later, authorities said. The child was not injured.
The mother was approaching the front door of the Hawthorne Police Department around 6 p.m. Sunday to pick up the child when the father emerged from a parking lot with a shotgun and opened fire, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
An officer rushed out and opened fire as the father left the parking lot in a vehicle which was abandoned about four blocks away, according to the sheriff’s homicide bureau, which is assisting the local department with the investigation.
Officers blocked off streets and arrested a suspect around 9:30 p.m. His identity and the names of the mother and child were not immediately released.
A shotgun was found just found just outside the police station’s front doors.
It was the second violent incident in the area in a matter of hours.
Earlier Sunday, a Hawthorne police officer was wounded in a confrontation with an armed man in an incident that was reported as domestic violence at a hotel and turned into a gunbattle in a parking lot and shopping center.
A man, whose name was not released, was later arrested in an underground parking structure and taken to a hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to the upper torso.
The Sheriff’s Department said the wounds suffered by the officer and the suspect were not life-threatening.
Hawthorne is a Los Angeles suburb of 87,000 people.
