Man shot by LAPD near Metro station assaulted woman and stabbed man during chase, police say
L.A. police officers shot a man Tuesday near an East Hollywood Metro station. Before the confrontation, officials said Wednesday, the suspect assaulted a 74-year-old woman and stabbed a man while officers were giving chase.
The suspect, identified in an LAPD statement as Mason Todd Swenor, 23, of Glendale, Ariz., survived the shooting. He was booked on suspicion of attempted murder.
About 9:40 a.m. Tuesday at the Vermont/Beverly Metro station, an 18-year-old man informed LAPD transit police that a man had brandished a knife at him, police officials said.
The man showed cellphone images of the suspect to police and told them the direction in which he’d run.
Officers followed and approached Swenor, who was allegedly armed with a knife, on an upper level of the station and told him to drop the knife.
Swenor ran to a higher level, where he hit a 74-year-old woman in the head with an unknown object, the LAPD said.
Officers shot and wounded a man suspected of stabbing another man as he fled an altercation with a woman on the Red Line train platform, the LAPD said.
Swenor made it to the street level of the station, where he allegedly stabbed a 61-year-old man in the left shoulder before fleeing into a parking lot in the 300 block of North Vermont Avenue.
Video taken by a resident of the area and obtained by KTLA-TV Channel 5 showed police surrounding the suspect in the parking lot. Swenor can be seen dropping an object as he attempts to hide behind a car.
The suspect can be seen picking up the object before again running.
The LAPD said Swenor “charged at one of the officers.”
Swenor was transported to a hospital, where he was being treated for his injuries as of Wednesday afternoon.
The 74-year-old woman was treated at a hospital and released, while the 61-year-old was hospitalized with a laceration. He was in stable condition, police said.
The shooting is under investigation by the LAPD’s Force Investigation Division.
After more than two days, Kern County investigators have released very little information about the killing of four people in an RV in Mojave, the nation’s 185th mass shooting of 2023.
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