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Police fatally shot a knife-wielding 62-year-old man who allegedly broke into his neighbor's home in Long Beach over the weekend and killed his neighbor's dog.
Authorities responded to a report of an armed robbery around 3:55 p.m. on Saturday on the 300 block of Cherry Avenue, according to KABC. The neighbor told police that the suspect, 62-year-old Richard Joseph Barrett, broke into his home through the front door and was armed with a knife and crowbar. In fear, the neighbor ran out the back door and called police.
Long Beach police told the L.A. Times that they fatally shot Barrett in the walkway of the neighbor's home after he ignored the officers' commands and tried to attack. Barrett was pronounced dead at the scene.
When authorities went inside the apartment, they recovered a knife and also found the neighbor's dog dead. They discovered that the apartment had been vandalized and that the suspect also lit a fire inside of the home, City News Service reported.
Some neighbors expressed concern over the officer-involved shooting, saying that they didn't hear the officers tell the suspect to drop the weapon before they began shooting. “It makes no sense that there were no scuffles, or screams, or a ‘stop’ or mega-phone activity," Long Beach resident Sarah McGovern told KTLA. "Silence between when the sirens came and 10 shots were fired."
Although Long Beach police Sgt. Brad Johnson said that the two homeowners, who have been neighbors for 10 years, haven't had a history of disputes, friends told KABC that the two had an ongoing feud.
No officers were injured in the incident. Authorities are still investigating the motive for the attack. An autopsy for Barrett is pending.
This is the third time an intruder in Long Beach has been fatally shot in a high-profile incident since July. A 29-year-old who friends claim was just drunk was shot by a homeowner after breaking into a home just a half-mile away from this weekend's incident in July. And in August in the toney neighborhood of Bixby Knolls to the north, an 80-year-old man shot a woman who broke into his home and beat him as she pleaded for her life by claiming (falsely) that she was pregnant.
