LAPD officers shoot in separate incidents in Westlake and El Sereno

Los Angeles Police Department officers fired their weapons Friday in two separate incidents in Westlake and El Sereno, officials said.

The first incident began about 3:50 p.m., when a woman flagged down an LAPD sergeant near Bonnie Brae Street and Wilshire Boulevard and said she was concerned about a man armed with a hammer and an ax, the LAPD said.

The sergeant requested backup and came up with a plan to take the man into custody, the LAPD said. The officers followed the man for several blocks, giving commands and eventually using less-lethal munitions, which proved ineffective, according to the LAPD.

At least one officer opened fire on Bonnie Brae Street between 6th Street and Wilshire Boulevard, the LAPD said. The man was struck by gunfire and taken to a hospital. No officers were injured in the incident.

The police recovered a hammer and a small hatchet at the scene, according to the LAPD.

It wasn’t clear what prompted the police to fire at the man. Officer Mike Lopez, a spokesman for the LAPD, said determining that sequence of events will be up to the department’s Force Investigation Division, which reviews every use of deadly force by an LAPD officer.

Lopez said it wasn’t known how many officers fired their weapons or how many times the man was struck.

In the second incident, an LAPD officer opened fire Friday evening near the intersection of Chester Street and Bullard Avenue in El Sereno. Details of that shooting weren’t immediately available.

Two days earlier, an off-duty LAPD lieutenant in El Sereno fired his service weapon at a car after witnessing its occupants shoot a man on a sidewalk, the police said. The car sped off and it wasn’t clear whether anyone was struck by the lieutenant’s gunfire. The man shot by the car’s occupants was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

That shooting occurred about a mile from where an LAPD officer opened fire Friday.