A manhunt is currently underway in Los Angeles for a suspect who is believed to be responsible for three murders in the past week. All three of the victims were homeless and all three were shot in the early morning as they slept on the streets of central LA.
The three victims — all men who were in alleys or open areas by themselves — were shot and killed in the early morning hours, said Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department. The killings took place in different locations across central Los Angeles on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, but he said that investigators had discovered similarities among the three killings, based on physical evidence and camera footage, that led them to believe the events were connected.
“This is a killer who is preying on the unhoused,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “Many friends and family members know how to reach their unhoused relatives. We need you to contact them today. We need you to tell them about this danger.”
The authorities asked the public to help them to identify a dark-colored sedan and a person appearing in a surveillance image, whom they described only as a male. Federal and county investigators are also working on the case and trying to determine whether there have been more victims.
These are the two grainy images released by police, one of the killer and one of the car they believe he is using to get around.
Los Angeles city officials search for killer of homeless people murdered this week https://t.co/Q3Br4z5QDp
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 2, 2023
I don’t think anyone is going to get much out of the image of the suspect, except that he’s a man wearing a baseball cap. But the image of the car is better. Hopefully someone will recognize it. So far, two of the three victims have been identified by police.
The first victim was shot about 3:10 am. on Sunday in an alley near the intersection of 110th Street and Vermont Avenue in South L.A., police said. The man, identified by police as Jose Bolanos, 37, was found dead with a gunshot wound.
The following day, Mark Diggs, 62, was shot and killed about 4:45 a.m. in the 600 block of Mateo Street. Moore said Diggs was pushing a shopping cart and had stopped to plug in his phone and was about to go to sleep when the assailant approached him and shot him.
The third shooting occurred on Wednesday at about 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Avenue 18 and Pasadena Avenue in the Lincoln Heights area, where the body of a 52-year-old Latino man was discovered.
This isn’t the first time a serial killer has stalked the homeless in LA. In 2018 a man beat seven homeless people with a bat, killing four of them.
In 2018, a 47-year-old Houston man named Ramon Escobar was arrested and charged after beating to death four people and severely injuring several others in a spate of attacks in downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. He was later sentenced to life in prison for the killings.
Last year there was a similar shooting spree case in Northern California in which several of the victims were homeless:
Wesley Brownlee was arrested and charged in San Joaquin County with a spree of shootings, seven of which were fatal, in Stockton and the Bay Area. Investigators noted in that case that three of the men who were fatally shot and two of the victims who survived were unhoused.
The fact that this person has targeted homeless people who are sleeping alone may just be because he felt he wouldn’t be caught. But once someone is shooting people at random it’s probably not safe for anyone alone on the streets late at night.
There are an estimated 46,000 homeless people in LA and about 70% of them sleep outside at night. Authorities are warning the homeless not to isolate themselves and have opened up warming shelters in hopes that many will come inside.
Finally, here’s a local news report from KCAL.
Read the full article here