Updated: 4:06 p.m. on April 3, 2026. For the update on this story, click here.
Javier Smith awoke early Friday to the sound of six or seven gunshots ringing on his residential block in the Westmont neighborhood. He raced outside to see a man lying flat on the asphalt.
Smith and other Westmont residents stood clustered outside their homes well after Los Angeles Police Department officers left the neighborhood later in the morning, with some residents still trying to work out the events that led to the man’s death.
LAPD said in a statement on X that officers shot and killed a man early Friday morning near the intersection of 112th Street and Van Buren Avenue after a prior shooting at a gas station. The department said the statement, posted shortly before 6 a.m., was based on preliminary information.
Police have yet to identify the man killed or the officers who opened fire. A spokesperson for the LA County Medical Examiner’s office said the man was in his 40s and that more information will be released after the man’s family is notified.
The LA County District Attorney’s Office told The LA they are aware of and responded to the incident. The DA’s office reviews most police shootings in the county.
LAPD said officers received a call around 1 a.m. that one man had shot and injured another at a gas station on Vermont Avenue. Officers later tracked down a suspect at least several blocks away in the unincorporated Westmont neighborhood.
Officers said they saw the man carrying a handgun and that he did not comply with their commands. They then opened fire, according to the statement.
Police said they took the man into custody, and he was later pronounced dead at the scene by LA County Fire Department paramedics.
The LAPD Force Investigation Division responded to the scene and will investigate the incident, according to the statement. The department said a handgun was recovered at the scene.
The man injured in the earlier gas station shooting is in stable condition at a local hospital, according to police. No other people were injured.
Police blocked off the residential intersection with police tape in all four directions for much of Friday morning, departing the neighborhood shortly before 10 a.m.
