Shooting Shuts Down 210 Freeway

A police pursuit turned into a freeway shutdown in Sylmar on Tuesday, May 5 — and it wrecked the evening commute across a big chunk of Los Angeles. The core event was not just “police activity.” LAPD officers shot an armed man on the westbound 210 Freeway after, police say, he ran onto the roadway and tried to carjack a driver. That forced a full closure near Polk Street for most of the afternoon and into the night. (abc7.com) ### How did this start? It began off the freeway. LAPD said officers with its Narcotics Enforcement Detail were looking for a known suspect with multiple warrants in the 14000 block of Bledsoe Street around 1 p.m. KTLA’s earlier account put the first related call at 12:40 p.m. and said narcotics officers had asked for backup. In other words, this started as a wanted-person operation, then spilled into traffic. (abc7.com) ### Why did it end up on the 210? Police say the suspect fled on foot and made his way down to the westbound side of the 210. Once there, he allegedly approached an uninvolved driver with a handgun and tried to take the vehicle. That is the detail that changed this from a neighborhood search into a freeway emergency — now you had an armed suspect in live traffic, with drivers trapped around him. (abc7.com) ### Why did officers shoot? LAPD’s account is that officers surrounded the suspect and ordered him to drop the gun, but he refused. At least one officer then fired, hitting the suspect in the arm. Police said the man still did not comply right away, so officers used a 40mm less-lethal launcher before taking him into custody. The handgun was recovered at the scene. (abc7.com) ### Was anyone else hurt? Turns out, the answer appears to be no. The suspect was taken to a hospital in stable condition, and ABC7 later reported that he was treated, released, and placed under arrest. No officers were reported injured. No freeway drivers were reported hurt either, which is the part that kept this from becoming much worse. (abc7.com) ### Why did the closure last so long? Because this was now an officer-involved shooting on an active freeway. Investigators had to secure the scene, recover the weapon, document where everything happened, and work through the evidence on the roadway itself. KTLA showed (abc7.com)does not get cleared fast. (ktla.com) ### How bad was the traffic? Pretty brutal. CHP issued the Sigalert around 2:15 p.m., all westbound traffic was diverted off at Polk Street, and the lanes did not fully reopen until shortly after 9 p.m. ABC7 said backups stretched more than five miles at times, with spillover onto the 170 and 5 as drivers hunted for alternate r(ktla.com)ey commute. (abc7.com) ### Why does this matter beyond one bad commute? Because it shows how fast a police search can become a regional transportation problem when it jumps onto a major freeway. The shutdown was not caused by a random shooting between motorists. It came from a wanted-suspect operation that escalated onto one of the Valley’s main east-west routes, then stayed frozen for hours while investigators worked. (abc7.com) ### Bottom line? The key fact is simple: LAPD shot an armed suspect on the westbound 210 in Sylmar after, police say, he tried to carjack a driver on the freeway. Everything that followed — the seven-hour closure, the Sigalert, and the massive backups — came from that moment. (abc7.com)