Standoff Ends in Flames

A High Desert compound erupted in flames Friday night after authorities used tear gas and a battering ram to try to flush out a heavily armed, barricaded man suspected of killing a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

The fire in the Lake Los Angeles area broke out about 8 p.m., nearly four hours after Sheriff Lee Baca told reporters Donald Charles Kueck would be taken out of the house “dead or alive.”

Kueck, 52, had exchanged gunfire with sheriff’s deputies before the fire, which quickly spread through the house and several outbuildings, investigators said.

They said it was not immediately known whether Kueck, who was moving about the property, had been trapped and killed in any of the structures, all of which were destroyed.

Michael Soderberg, the sheriff’s chief of detectives, said it might be several more hours before investigators knew his fate. He said he doubted Kueck could have escaped through the tight cordon of heavily armed officers surrounding the property.

Authorities don’t know what started the fire. “It could have been our tear gas, it could have been our suspect,” Soderberg said. “We were actively engaging the suspect in gunfire, a lot of gunfire.”

Deputies held back firefighters, unwilling to risk lives to try to save the property, Soderberg said.

Police also had used a battering ram to punch holes in several of the outbuildings.

Baca said Kueck was traced to the house about noon on Friday after the suspect turned on a hand-held radio that he apparently had taken from the victim, Deputy Stephen Sorensen, a 12-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department.

Officers began a conversation over the radio with Kueck, who “confirmed that he, in fact, killed our deputy,” Baca said.

Sorensen, 46, was shot last Saturday while investigating a trespassing complaint at Kueck’s trailer home in nearby Llano. Baca said the suspect said over the radio on Friday that “no cop will come on his property and tell him what to do.”

The sheriff said Kueck seemed emotionally unstable and apparently had not been taking prescribed medication. Baca didn’t elaborate. .

Baca said Kueck apparently was armed with Sorensen’s 9-millimeter service pistol and his own high-powered .223-caliber rifle. Because of the rifle’s range, the officers kept their distance and used a helicopter to watch the house.

The house, which was on a dirt road about three miles southeast of Lake Los Angeles, was owned by a friend of Kueck’s who has been cooperating with police, Soderberg said.

Kueck apparently went to the home late Thursday or early Friday, because he was not there when deputies checked the residence on Thursday afternoon, Soderberg said.

Sorensen, who had lived and worked in the eastern Antelope Valley so long that he was known as the “town sheriff,” was killed after he responded to a trespassing call at the trailer home in Llano.

Detectives have not revealed who made the call.

According to police documents and interviews, Sorensen radioed police dispatchers that he had arrived at the scene and called in the license plate number on a car that turned out to be Kueck’s about 12:30 p.m. It was his last communication with the department.

A few minutes later, someone called 911 to report that shots had been fired near the trailer. When dispatchers couldn’t contact Sorensen by radio, deputies sped to the scene. They found bloodstains and evidence of a struggle near the patrol car, but no sign of the deputy.

About an hour later, Sorensen’s body was found in the brush. He had been shot in the torso. Kueck’s abandoned car was found about 2 1/2 miles away. Detectives said they found chemicals near the trailer and are trying to determine whether they were being used to make methamphetamine.

Sorensen, who was buried Thursday, is survived by his wife, Christine, and two children.

Court records show that Kueck was charged twice in the past with crimes involving resisting arrest.

In September 2001, he pleaded no contest in Riverside County to a single count of assault after being charged with assault with a knife, unlawful use of force on a police officer and resisting arrest. Kueck was sentenced to a year in jail and placed on three years’ probation.

In 1997, he was convicted of a single misdemeanor count of resisting arrest after he refused to produce a driver’s license and drove away after being stopped by a police officer in the Antelope Valley.