Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies ended a shootout with a barricaded murder suspect by tossing burning road flares into his desert hide-out, sparking a blaze last year that contributed to his death.
Sheriff Lee Baca said the tactic of setting fire to a shed to drive the suspect out was "unorthodox." But the action was justified, Baca said, because the man was "using deadly assault weapons against us."
Authorities had been trying to force the surrender of Donald Kueck, an unemployed drug addict with a criminal record dating back to the 1990s. He had admitted that day to killing a deputy a week before and had fired repeatedly at officers during an eight-hour standoff in a remote section of the Antelope Valley.
"If I decided to ... take a bazooka and run that round right into that shed, it would be totally justified," Baca said.
Kueck was responsible for his own death, Baca said. "If the flare is causing a fire," he said, "he should get out."
But the propriety of using burning flares to flush out Kueck is being reviewed by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, the sheriff's Homicide Bureau and the department's Bureau of Internal Affairs. None of those agencies would comment.
Kueck, 52, died of "multiple firearms wounds with other significant conditions as probable effects from thermal burns," according to the Los Angeles County coroner's office. His charred remains were found inside a burned-out structure.
Ramona Ripston, head of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that using fire on a suspect was outside the bounds of proper law enforcement.
"Police are supposed to apprehend suspects, not deliver the punishment," Ripston said. "The house was surrounded. In this case, they were taking justice into their own hands, and it was rogue justice."
Tactical policing experts and academics said the tactic surprised them.
"I can't fathom someone having said that the best way to solve this problem is using road flares," said Bob Louden, a professor and director of the Criminal Justice Center at John Jay College and consultant to the New York Police Department's hostage negotiation and SWAT teams.
"They've got a very good tactical reputation, and it's surprising that an organization that is that big and has been involved in police tactics as long as they have would get involved in that," he said.
