Police Murders

A Fresno County sheriff's deputy was fatally shot and two other officers were wounded Thursday in an all-day confrontation with a barricaded arson suspect in the tiny unincorporated community of Minkler, 20 miles east of Fresno. "This morning, I had to deliver the message that no law enforcement leader wants to deliver, and that was to the wife of a deputy sheriff, that her husband had been killed in the line of duty," Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said at a news conference.

As they have for 10 years, young and old officers arrived in Compton on Saturday night to honor two of their own murdered on a rain-slick night in 1993. More than 100 former Compton police officers, many retired or now working at other departments, joined residents and family members to remember Officers Kevin Michael Burrell, 29, and James Wayne MacDonald, 23, who were killed on Feb. 22, 1993, during a traffic stop at Rosecrans and Dwight avenues -- the site of Saturday's vigil.

Calling the 1999 slaying of an Orange County sheriff's deputy a "coldblooded, unprovoked attack," a judge Friday sentenced the killer to death. Judge Frank F. Fasel rejected a defense lawyer's argument that Maurice Gerald Steskal should instead be sentenced to life in prison because of mental illness the defense said caused the killer to irrationally fear police officers.

Describing it as "urban terrorism," California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown joined with Riverside County officials Thursday in asking the public to help find those who tried at least three times to kill officers assigned to a Hemet-based gang task force. "It is incredible and even unprecedented for police officers here to be subject to terrorist attack," Brown said at a Riverside news conference. "We have seen it south of the border, but not here yet." The attacks have involved booby traps aimed at either the headquarters of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force or officers assigned to the unit, officials said.

An Antelope Valley man identified by law enforcement sources Monday as the prime suspect in the slaying of a sheriff's deputy was charged twice in the past with crimes involving resisting arrest, according to court records. The manhunt continued Monday for Donald Charles Kueck, the only suspect in the shooting death of Deputy Stephen Sorensen on Saturday off a remote Antelope Valley road. A sheriff's spokesman, however, publicly continued to call Kueck a "person of interest."

Jerry Ortiz was the kind of deputy whose flashy grin could make even the suspects he was booking smile. It was his good humor and love of family that fellow deputies remembered as Ortiz, killed while searching for a suspect one week ago today, was eulogized on a misty Thursday morning at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.

The man who killed a Las Vegas police officer responding to a domestic violence call was a rapper whose lyrics spoke of violence and hate, police said. Rapper Amir Rashid Crump, 21, known as Trajik of the duo Desert Mobb, fatally shot Sgt. Henry Prendes, 37, who responded with a fellow officer to a home southwest of the Las Vegas Strip on Feb. 1, police say. Crump is seen brandishing an assault rifle on the cover of the duo's 2005 debut, "L.Y.T. C.Y.T.I."

In the months after Sheriff's Deputy David March was shot to death, his parents and widow stood united in grief and in the hunt for his alleged killer, who is believed to be hiding in Mexico. Together, they raged against the hurdles to returning the suspect to California, taking their campaign to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Three years later, they still live just a few miles apart in the Santa Clarita area, where a park has been named for Dave March.

A 16-year-old boy told police he killed a California Highway Patrol officer in a drive-by shooting to prove himself to a Pomona street gang, authorities said Thursday. The boy told police he had not targeted Officer Thomas Steiner, but had wanted to shoot any police officer he could find. Police arrested the teenager, whose name was not released, early Thursday in Pomona.

More than 3,000 law enforcement officers, family members, friends and community residents packed the grounds of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in La Quinta on Monday to honor the memory of Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Bruce Lee, who was killed last week while responding to a domestic violence call. "He gave up his tomorrows so we can have safer todays," state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer told mourners during a 90-minute service. "Bruce's service and sacrifice will never be forgotten."