More Details Emerge In Gun Battle Involving Off-Duty LAPD Officer

SHERMAN OAKS, CA — An off-duty Los Angeles Police Department remains hospitalized after being shot with his own weapon by a man who police say broke into his car and stole his gun and bulletproof vest.

Around 2:25 p.m. Wednesday, the officer left his apartment and went to his car in an underground parking garage in the 5200 block of Vesper Avenue, near Van Nuys Boulevard and Magnolia Boulevard. LAPD Chief Michel Moore said the officer found the suspect sitting in his car, wearing his bulletproof vest and holding his gun.

"As he confronts the suspect ... an altercation ensues," Moore said. "That altercation turns into what we believe to be a gun battle between the both of them, with the suspect using the officer's primary duty weapon and the officer defending himself from that attack. This ensuing altercation goes through the subterranean garage in an easterly direction to the back side of this apartment and into an east-west breezeway, where the suspect is struck ... and falls to the ground."

The officer took back his gun from the suspect after he was wounded, before collapsing near his car from his injuries, Moore said. Paramedics from the Los Angeles Fire Department arrived and took him to the nearest hospital.

The officer was in stable condition although he had suffered "traumatic" injuries, with Moore saying he was not "out of the woods yet."

The wounded suspect was also treated by paramedics and is considered to be in stable condition. The suspect was described only as a Hispanic man by LAPD, and it wasn't immediately known how he got into the locked garage or the officer's car.

"I am grateful," Moore said Wednesday afternoon at the shooting scene. "At the same time this is happening, we have an attempt murder that happened in West Valley involving a security guard and two other individuals in a shooting. And we're currently investigating an attack involving a family, involving young children, that were attacked by another family member.

"From what started out as a burglary, or what started out as simply as a theft into a vehicle... the senselessness of this escalating to this level of violence really has me extremely troubled," Moore continued.

READ MORE: Off-Duty LAPD Officer Hospitalized After Sherman Oaks Shooting

City News Service contributed to this report.