Sheriff’s deputy shot dead outside his Cypress Park home on Home Services

Aug

Sheriff’s deputy shot dead outside his Cypress Park home

posted by admin in Home Care Services

Praised by his bosses as a “local success story” after growing up in a neighborhood entrenched in gang warfare, was gunned down Saturday outside his boyhood home in Cypress Park as he left for work.

Escalante’s wife and mother rushed to the deputy, who was not wearing his uniform, the neighbor said.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said it was “too early to know” whether the shooting was gang related or connected to the deputy’s assignment at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. Deputies typically work in the county jails as their first assignment.

Escalante, his wife and their three children were living with his parents but were preparing to buy a home in Pomona.

The blue-collar neighborhood of modest single-family homes northeast of downtown had experienced a fragile lull in gang violence in recent years until feuding between rival groups erupted in January.

In February, a shooting outside an elementary school a few blocks from Escalante’s home touched off a fierce gun battle between gang members and police in neighboring Glassell Park. The violence led to a massive gang raid in late June by heavily armed police and federal agents, who stormed an area around Drew Street, about a mile north of where Escalante was slain.

While the number of gang crimes across the city of Los Angeles has fallen this year, the Cypress Park neighborhood and the surrounding northeast section of the city is among the few areas that have seen a significant rise, according to police department crime statistics.