One woman dead in shooting near a California gas station
TARZANA, Calif. (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - As police descended and shut down a Tarzana gas station Sunday morning, and word spread of an officer shooting a woman who the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) says was attacking people with a metal pipe, Brandon Cossu thought about the woman he’d run into at a liquor store.
"Yeah, I’ve seen her on the block before a few times definitely not a transient...definitely not a homeless person. She was making the one lady behind the counter really uncomfortable and I felt really bad about that. She was just banging on the walls, and she was slamming the doors and she was telling her all types of stuff, and then the lady behind the counter was whispering to me, she’s like...I think she’s schizophrenic," Cossu detailed.
Once outside the liquor store, police say the suspect, described only as a woman in her 30s, hit four people with the pipe, leaving them with serious face and head injuries.
LAPD says when officers arrived just after 8:30am, they found her in the gas station parking lot at the corner of Reseda and Burbank Boulevards.
They say attempts to subdue her with non-lethal tools quickly failed.
"Officers deployed a taser, a 40 mm foam baton round, and an officer-involved shooting occurred, the suspect was struck by gunfire, was taken in custody and transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced deceased," said Bruce Borihanh, Public Information Officer (PIO) for the LAPD.