Shooting at Halloween party came days after deputy killed man on same block

An L.A. County sheriff’s deputy had fatally shot a man last week on the same Whittier block where three people were critically wounded in a shooting at a Halloween house party Friday, authorities said Sunday.

The Halloween party shootings took place in the street outside a home in the unincorporated 1000 block of Obregon Street near Eduardo Avenue and triggered a chaotic scene that spread into "a nonrelated vigil at a nearby residence for someone who had passed away," L.A. County Sheriff's Sgt. Carlos Sanchez said.

Five days earlier, a deputy had shot and killed a man near the intersection of Obregon Street and Eduardo Avenue, L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy Juanita Navarro-Suarez said. She declined to identify the man who was killed.

It was unclear Sunday night whether the incidents were related.

Deputies said they were on patrol Oct. 10 when they began talking to a man who was walking in the middle of the street, the Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

During the conversation, the man pulled out a firearm, and at least one deputy fired at him, officials said. The deputies were still seated in their patrol car at the time of the shooting. The man died at the scene, Navarro-Suarez said.

In the case of the Halloween house party, deputies were called to the Whittier home for a report of a fistfight. They arrived to find that “a suspect had produced a handgun and fired into a crowd, possibly at some guys he was fighting with,” Sanchez said.

The victims, who ranged in age from 15 to 19, were in critical condition but stable at a hospital, Sanchez said.

A suspect, who remains unidentified, fled on foot after the shooting and had not been captured as of Saturday afternoon, he said. A Sheriff's Department official could not be reached Sunday night for an update on the hunt for the suspect.

Anyone with information about the house party shooting is asked to call the Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.