WALNUT PARK : Family of Shootout Victim Files Claim Against County

The family of a man who died in a March 29 shootout that also claimed the life of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy filed a wrongful death claim against the county Wednesday.

R. Samuel Paz, an attorney representing the wife and children of Homero Isidoro Ibarra, 30, said Ibarra had complied with deputies’ commands to raise his hands over his head before he was shot to death in the gun battle behind a garage in the unincorporated Walnut Park area.

Sheriff Sherman Block answered the allegations later Wednesday, saying that the deputies had gone to the scene in response to reports that Ibarra was brandishing a gun. Block said Ibarra was caught in the cross-fire between another man and the deputies. A replica of a .45-caliber pistol was found beside Ibarra’s body.

Deputy Nelson Yamamoto also died in the shootout. The man who allegedly killed him, 26-year-old Cesar Uriel Mazariego-Molina, was shot to death by state troopers who cornered him on a farm in Upstate New York on Monday.