A long-serving Catholic bishop was shot and killed in Los Angeles on Saturday, according to the church and officials.
Auxiliary Bishop David O'Connell, 69, “ has passed away unexpectedly,” said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez in a
statement. “It is a shock and I have no words to express my sadness.”
The LA County Sheriff’s Department
told local media that a shooting happened at around 1 p.m. in the 1500 block of Janlu Avenue. When officials arrived, they found a man who was suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the chest and was later pronounced dead.
The office later confirmed that the victim was identified as O'Connell, who was named to his Catholic Church position by Pope Francis in 2015. He served the Los Angeles area for about 45 years, the church said.
While Gomez did not elaborate on O‘Connell’s cause of death, he said that O’Connell was “a man of deep prayer” and “a peacemaker with a heart for the poor and the immigrant, and he had a passion for building a community where the sanctity and dignity of every human life was honored and protected.”
Authorities have not provided any updates on a potential suspect. Few details about the shooting were released to the public as of Sunday morning, local time.
“It’s very early in the investigation,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective Michael Modica told CBS Los Angeles. “We got a lot more steps we have to take to make more determination to what’s happening.”
Janice Hahn, Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, responded to the shooting in a statement.
“I was very sad to learn of the passing of Bishop O’Connell. He was a longtime friend,” she
wrote. “I was fortunate to work with him during my time on the city council and again as Supervisor. I join with Archbishop Gomez and the people of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in mourning his loss.”
Anyone with information can contact the sheriff’s department’s Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500. Anonymous tips can be sent via “Crime Stoppers” at 800-222-8477 or online at lacrimestoppers.org.
After he was named to his position in 2015, O'Connell
said, “It’s been the great joy of my life to be the pastor of these people, especially the ones who are suffering or in need or facing difficulty ... and it’s been a great privilege, a great blessing to be given these parishes all these years, to be pastor all these years. The people have touched my heart the way they are sincere.”
Homicides Remain High
Last year, Los Angeles officially recorded 382 homicides, down about 3.8 percent from the 391 murders reported in 2021. However, it’s up from 355 murders in 2020, data
shows.
For all of the 2010s, Los Angeles never exceeded more than 300 homicides in a year. During the summer of 2022, the murder rate in Los Angeles surged, as there were 44 murders in both July and August,
according to publicly available data from the Los Angeles Police Department.
