We have been covering the escalating violence in the Los Angeles area, as well as the rest of California.
Another disturbing incident garnering much attention in the area is the death of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, who appeared to have been shot to death in his own home. Police officials are investigating the death as a homicide.
“This incident is being handled as a murder investigation,” the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said in a brief statement. “There is no additional information available at this time.”Sheriff’s deputies responding to a medical emergency call found the body of O’Connell, 69, who served as a priest and bishop in L.A. County for nearly half a century, at a home in the 1500 block of Janlu Avenue in Hacienda Heights around 1 p.m. on Saturday, authorities said.He had suffered a gunshot wound and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, sheriff’s officials said.“We are deeply disturbed and saddened by this news,” Archbishop José H. Gómez of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles said in a statement Sunday. “Let us continue to pray for Bishop Dave and his family. And let us pray for law enforcement officials as they continue their investigation into this terrible crime.”
Detectives are attempting to piece together the circumstances of the homicide and determine the identity of O’Connell’s killer.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators said they received a medical emergency call at 12:57 p.m. Sunday and deputies responded to a home in the unincorporated neighborhood of Hacienda Heights. There, they found the 69-year-old O’Connell unresponsive and bleeding from a gunshot wound to the upper torso. He was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said.No arrests have been announced.It’s unclear how long O’Connell had been dead before sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home.
The police took a man into custody on Monday but have not released any details:
The suspect wanted in the shooting death of Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell was taken into custody during an operation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau, the sources said. The man was identified by detectives early in the investigation through an unnamed technical means, according to the sources, and was located and detained without incident.
O’Connell has been a priest, then bishop, during his 45 years of service with the Catholic Church. The local community is shocked by the violent death of a man known as “the peacemaker.”
Many were in shock of the news, with several citizens of the LA suburb where more than 80 percent of residents are either Hispanic of Asian questioning who would kill such a respected figure.’I was devastated to hear this,’ said Donna Marie, a local resident. ‘Everybody is kind of shocked right now because this kind of thing doesn’t happen around here.’Jose Alvarez agreed, saying: ‘When I first heard the news, I thought he had a heart attack. I’m shocked it was through a gunshot.’He said the auxiliary bishop was a man of the people. ‘The bishops are usually inaccessible,’ Alvarez explained. ‘A lot of times, they’re kind of hidden in an office, but he was but in parish doing a healing mass.’
The term “peacemaker” is an homage to O’Connell’s efforts to heal the community after the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
There, Bishop O’Connell ministered to a community afflicted by gang violence, poverty, broken families, as well as tensions between locals and members of Los Angeles Police Department and the LA Sheriff’s Department that eventually boiled over during the LA riots in 1992 that followed the beating of Rodney King by police officers.The riots broke out during then-Father O’Connell’s first tour at St. Frances X. Cabrini (1988-98). Bishop O’Connell would later tell how he was in Washington, testifying before a panel on Capitol Hill about violence in urban America, when the riots started. He came home days later to find widespread destruction in much of his parish’s territory.Apart from aiding neighborhood recovery efforts, Father O’Connell pushed to restore trust between the inner-city residents and law enforcement. He and other local faith leaders helped organize meetings with police officers in people’s homes and provide opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation.As a pastor, Father O’Connell also saw firsthand the effect of broken families on the community. That inspired him to organize retreats for men — usually in the mountains — focusing on how to be good fathers and husbands, something he saw as key to the health of a community.
Los Angeles’ Catholic leaders are now organizing a special memorial mass for O’Connell.
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