Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : 17-Year-Old Palmdale Boy Fatally Shot by Deputy

LANCASTER —  A sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a 17-year-old youth who the deputy said pointed a pistol at him in an alley, authorities said Thursday.

The dead youth, Kevin Joice of Palmdale, ran from three deputies who were investigating a report of shots being fired in the 45100 block of Beech Avenue in Lancaster about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, said Deputy Britta Tubbs of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The deputies from the Antelope Valley station spotted three men who matched a description of the shooting suspects in a parking lot behind a laundry about six blocks from the site of the initial shooting and were able to apprehend two of them, Tubbs said.

Joice ran and was chased by one deputy into an alley behind a house in the 44700 block of Beech Avenue, Tubbs said.

As a second deputy arrived in a patrol car, Joice fell, rolled onto his back and pulled a loaded .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol from his belt, Tubbs said.

She said that Joice ignored an order from the deputies to drop the gun, and both deputies fired several shots, hitting Joice in the chest. Paramedics pronounced Joice dead at the scene.

James Gay, a Lancaster resident who lives in a home in front of the alley, was struck by a bullet fragment that hit his house.