3 deputies killed in explosion at Los Angeles training center
The writer is a Los Angeles correspondent for the New York Times
Shawn Hubler
The writer is the Los Angeles bureau chief for The New York Times
Three sheriff's deputies were killed in an explosion at a law enforcement training centre in Los Angeles, local and federal officials said. The deaths were the largest loss of life for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department from a single episode since 1857, authorities said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, which occurred at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Biscailuz Training Academy centre in East Los Angeles. A state official familiar with the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation, called the explosion a tragic accident that appeared to have stemmed from the handling of on-site explosives.
There was no threat to the area, and the explosion was an isolated episode, said Sheriff Robert Luna. He added that the explosion at the training centre occurred around 7:30 am Pacific time. No one else was injured by the blast, he said. The sheriff's department identified the deputies as Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn. They were all assigned to the arson explosives unit, the department said in a statement.
Kelley-Eklund joined the sheriff's department in 2006 and served as a training officer and in the narcotics bureau before becoming an arson and explosives investigator in 2022, according to the statement. Lemus joined the department in 2003 and served as a K-9 handler before becoming an arson and explosives investigator last year. Osborn began his career with the department in 1992 and had been with the arson and explosives detail since 2019. Members of that bomb squad unit regularly handle dangerous situations or items, with an average of about 1,110 calls per year, Luna said. 'They are fantastic experts,' he said, 'and unfortunately, I lost three of them today.'
The three deputies had responded to a call in Santa Monica to assist police there with explosive devices that had been found, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department. The Sheriff's Department said it was not clear if those devices were the ones responsible for Friday's explosion. But homicide investigators were seeking a search warrant for the Santa Monica location and had evacuated residents there, Nishida said.
A Los Angeles County official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation said the three deputies had been alone when the explosion occurred, leaving few witnesses to shed light on the cause. A bomb squad from the Los Angeles Police Department rendered the scene safe by late Friday morning, Luna said, allowing investigators to begin to gain access to the site. 'We have to go back, investigate what happened from the very beginning, and we'll get there,' he said.
Firefighters and law enforcement officers take part in a procession as the remains of three sheriff's deputies killed on Friday are removed from the Biscailuz training center of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in East Los Angeles, on Friday, July 18, 2025. (Mark Abramson/The New York Times)
Investigators with the FBI, as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and detectives with the county sheriff's department were among those working at the site. Luna called the site of the explosion an 'active crime scene' and said homicide investigators were there. On Friday afternoon, a long procession of black-and-white sheriff's cruisers and officers on motorcycles snaked up and then down a hill on a street near the training center, escorting three medical examiner vans from the site that were believed to contain the remains of the fallen deputies. Residents waving American flags looked on.
The training facility, named for Eugene Biscailuz, a long-serving sheriff who helped organise the California Highway Patrol and was its first superintendent, lies east of downtown Los Angeles. The site hosts, among other county offices, the sheriff's Special Enforcement Bureau, a specialised unit that provides a range of tactical, rescue and counterterrorism support services throughout the county, including an explosives detail.
Several people who live near the training centre said in interviews that they had not heard an explosion. Mandie Rios, who lives a couple of blocks from the centre, was still groggy with sleep on Friday morning when she heard what sounded to her like a moving truck's door being slammed shut. A little later, she turned on the television and heard the news of the blast. Friday's explosion came more than two years after a deadly episode at a training facility for the sheriff's department. In November 2022, 25 recruits at an academy near the city of Whittier were injured while on a run after a driver going the wrong way ran into them. One of the recruits later died from his injuries, and the driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving.
The handling of explosives by police officers and sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles has led to problems in the past. In June 2021, 17 people were injured when part of a cache of illegal fireworks blew up in South Los Angeles in what was meant to be a controlled detonation by bomb squad technicians. Those technicians worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, not the county sheriff's department. Ten of the injured were law enforcement officers. The explosion also caused extensive damage to more than 20 homes and over a dozen businesses. The Los Angeles Police Department later said personnel had incorrectly estimated the weight of the fireworks, and the city last year agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle claims by residents.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
5 days ago
- Observer
3 deputies killed in explosion at Los Angeles training center
Tim Arango The writer is a Los Angeles correspondent for the New York Times Shawn Hubler The writer is the Los Angeles bureau chief for The New York Times Three sheriff's deputies were killed in an explosion at a law enforcement training centre in Los Angeles, local and federal officials said. The deaths were the largest loss of life for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department from a single episode since 1857, authorities said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, which occurred at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Biscailuz Training Academy centre in East Los Angeles. A state official familiar with the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation, called the explosion a tragic accident that appeared to have stemmed from the handling of on-site explosives. There was no threat to the area, and the explosion was an isolated episode, said Sheriff Robert Luna. He added that the explosion at the training centre occurred around 7:30 am Pacific time. No one else was injured by the blast, he said. The sheriff's department identified the deputies as Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn. They were all assigned to the arson explosives unit, the department said in a statement. Kelley-Eklund joined the sheriff's department in 2006 and served as a training officer and in the narcotics bureau before becoming an arson and explosives investigator in 2022, according to the statement. Lemus joined the department in 2003 and served as a K-9 handler before becoming an arson and explosives investigator last year. Osborn began his career with the department in 1992 and had been with the arson and explosives detail since 2019. Members of that bomb squad unit regularly handle dangerous situations or items, with an average of about 1,110 calls per year, Luna said. 'They are fantastic experts,' he said, 'and unfortunately, I lost three of them today.' The three deputies had responded to a call in Santa Monica to assist police there with explosive devices that had been found, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department. The Sheriff's Department said it was not clear if those devices were the ones responsible for Friday's explosion. But homicide investigators were seeking a search warrant for the Santa Monica location and had evacuated residents there, Nishida said. A Los Angeles County official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the investigation said the three deputies had been alone when the explosion occurred, leaving few witnesses to shed light on the cause. A bomb squad from the Los Angeles Police Department rendered the scene safe by late Friday morning, Luna said, allowing investigators to begin to gain access to the site. 'We have to go back, investigate what happened from the very beginning, and we'll get there,' he said. Firefighters and law enforcement officers take part in a procession as the remains of three sheriff's deputies killed on Friday are removed from the Biscailuz training center of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in East Los Angeles, on Friday, July 18, 2025. (Mark Abramson/The New York Times) Investigators with the FBI, as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and detectives with the county sheriff's department were among those working at the site. Luna called the site of the explosion an 'active crime scene' and said homicide investigators were there. On Friday afternoon, a long procession of black-and-white sheriff's cruisers and officers on motorcycles snaked up and then down a hill on a street near the training center, escorting three medical examiner vans from the site that were believed to contain the remains of the fallen deputies. Residents waving American flags looked on. The training facility, named for Eugene Biscailuz, a long-serving sheriff who helped organise the California Highway Patrol and was its first superintendent, lies east of downtown Los Angeles. The site hosts, among other county offices, the sheriff's Special Enforcement Bureau, a specialised unit that provides a range of tactical, rescue and counterterrorism support services throughout the county, including an explosives detail. Several people who live near the training centre said in interviews that they had not heard an explosion. Mandie Rios, who lives a couple of blocks from the centre, was still groggy with sleep on Friday morning when she heard what sounded to her like a moving truck's door being slammed shut. A little later, she turned on the television and heard the news of the blast. Friday's explosion came more than two years after a deadly episode at a training facility for the sheriff's department. In November 2022, 25 recruits at an academy near the city of Whittier were injured while on a run after a driver going the wrong way ran into them. One of the recruits later died from his injuries, and the driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving. The handling of explosives by police officers and sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles has led to problems in the past. In June 2021, 17 people were injured when part of a cache of illegal fireworks blew up in South Los Angeles in what was meant to be a controlled detonation by bomb squad technicians. Those technicians worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, not the county sheriff's department. Ten of the injured were law enforcement officers. The explosion also caused extensive damage to more than 20 homes and over a dozen businesses. The Los Angeles Police Department later said personnel had incorrectly estimated the weight of the fireworks, and the city last year agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle claims by residents.
Times of Oman
03-05-2025
- Times of Oman
Ship carrying aid, 16 people to Gaza explodes
Gaza City: A ship carrying 16 people and humanitarian aid to Gaza was rocked by explosions early on Friday off the coast of Malta, setting the vessel on fire and putting it at risk of sinking, according to the human rights group operating the ship, New York Times reported. The ship and its crew were safe after a tug vessel helped extinguish the blaze following a mayday call, the government of Malta said in a statement. It did not say what had caused the fire, adding that the authorities were monitoring the ship, which was in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, as per NYT. The ship, called The Conscience and operated by a group called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, had left Tunisia earlier this week carrying human rights activists and aid. The group has challenged Israel's blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian aid there. Before going to Gaza, the ship was scheduled to stop in Malta and pick up about 40 more people, including the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, said Yasemin Acar, a spokeswoman for the group, NYT reported. The Israeli military has blocked past attempts by pro-Palestinian activists to bring aid to Gaza by sea, including by force. In 2010, nine passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara, a flotilla carrying aid from Turkey to Gaza, were killed in an Israeli commando raid, sparking international outrage and a deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations. Crew members on the ship believed they had been hit by a drone attack, the coalition said. At around 12:20 am (local time), armed drones fired two bombs at the front of the ship when the ship neared Malta, the coalition said in a statement. That set off a fire, caused a substantial breach in the hull and broke the generator on board, leaving the crew without power. Parts of the group's account could not be independently confirmed. Video provided by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and verified by The New York Times appears to show a fire on the ship's deck as an alarm rings out. Security footage recorded after the reported time of the fire shows people on the ship assessing the damage as a man holds a fire extinguisher. The authorities in Malta said they received a mayday call from a passenger vessel of the same name at around 12:20am, reporting a fire on the bow. No casualties were reported, the Maltese government said. It was unclear on Friday morning whether the damaged ship would be allowed to dock in Malta. A nearby tug vessel with firefighting equipment helped to bring the fire under control by 1:30am, according to Malta's statement. Less than an hour later, the crew were confirmed to be safe. Ann Wright, another spokeswoman for the group, said that the crew had stayed aboard instead of evacuating to keep watch over the ship. The group has asked the crew to pick up the debris from the explosions so that it could undergo forensic examination, which would help determine whether a weapon had been used, Wright said, as per NYT. It was not clear who was responsible for the explosions on the flotilla near Malta on Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Israel has restricted humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip, barring it most recently since March in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a proposal to extend a ceasefire. There were 12 crew members and four civilian passengers on board the ship, according to the Maltese government and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition called on the international community to condemn the attack.
Observer
17-04-2025
- Observer
Opinion- It's time to protect America from America's President
America has periodically faced great national tests. The Civil War and Reconstruction. The Great Depression. McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. And now we face another great test — of our Constitution, our institutions, our citizens — as President Donald Trump ignores courts and sabotages universities and his officers grab people off the street. I've spent much of my career covering authoritarianism in other countries, and I've seen all this before. The chummy scene in the White House this week with Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was telling. 'Trump and Bukele Bond Over Human Rights Abuses in Oval Office Meeting,' read Rolling Stone's headline, which seemed about right. With chilling indifference, they discussed the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a father of three who is married to an American citizen and who in 2019 was ordered protected from deportation by an immigration judge. The Trump administration nonetheless deported Abrego Garcia as a result of what it eventually acknowledged was an 'administrative error,' and he now languishes in a brutal Salvadoran prison — even though, in contrast to Trump, he has no criminal record. This is a challenge to our constitutional system, for the principal lawbreaking here appears to have been committed not by Abrego Garcia but by the Trump administration. Appellate judges in the case warned that the administration's position represented a 'path of perfect lawlessness' and would mean 'the government could send any of us to a Salvadoran prison without due process.' Then the Supreme Court ruled that Trump must obey the district judge's instruction to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's return. Trump and Bukele effectively mocked our federal courts by making it clear that they had no intention of bringing Abrego Garcia home. Trump prides himself on his ability to free hostages held in foreign prisons, yet he presents himself as helpless when it comes to bringing back Abrego Garcia — even though we are paying El Salvador to imprison deportees. A remarkable New York Times investigation found that of the 238 migrants dispatched to the Salvadoran prison, most did not have criminal records and few were found to have ties to gangs. Officials appear to have selected their targets in part based on tattoos and a misunderstanding of their significance. This is the same administration that marked for deletion a photo of the World War II bomber Enola Gay, seemingly because it thought it had something to do with gay people. But this ineptitude is intertwined with brutality. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said that those sent to the Salvadoran prison 'should stay there for the rest of their lives.' Trump's border 'czar,' Tom Homan, suggested that governors of sanctuary states should be prosecuted and perhaps imprisoned. 'It's coming,' he said. Much of this echoes what I've seen abroad. In China, the government has cracked down on elite universities, crushed freethinking journalism, suppressed lawyers and forced intellectuals to parrot the party line. One university lecturer recalled how an ancient historian, Sima Qian, had spoken up for a disgraced general and been punished with castration: 'Most Chinese intellectuals still feel castrated, in that we don't dare stand up for what is right,' the lecturer told me — and I suspect some American university presidents feel that way today. In Communist Poland, in Venezuela, in Russia, in Bangladesh and in China, I've seen rulers cultivate personality cults and claim to follow laws that they concocted out of thin air. 'We are a nation of laws,' a Chinese state security official once told me as he detained me for, um, committing journalism. In North Korea, officials hailed Kim Jong Il's book, 'The Great Teacher of Journalists,' less in hopes of improving my writing than as a demonstration of utter fealty to the boss. Trump's Cabinet members can sometimes sound the same. Trump's defiance of the courts comes in the wider context of his attacks on law firms, universities and news organizations. The White House this week appeared to ignore a separate court by blocking Associated Press journalists from a White House event. In the face of this onslaught, many powerful institutions have caved. Nine law firms have surrendered and agreed to provide nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for the administration's preferred causes. Columbia University rolled over. We needed a dollop of hope, and this week it came from Harvard University. Facing absurd demands from the administration, it delivered a resolute no, standing fast even as Trump then halted $2.2 billion in federal funding and threatened the university's tax-exempt status. (A conflict alert: I'm a former member of Harvard's board of overseers, and my wife is a current member.) Yes, critics of elite universities make some legitimate points. For many years I've argued that we liberals sometimes ignore a crucial kind of diversity on campuses: We want to be inclusive of people who don't look like us, but only if they think like us. Too many university departments are ideological monocultures, with evangelical Christians and social conservatives often left to feel unwelcome. It's also true that there is a strain of antisemitism on the left, although Trump exaggerates it to encompass legitimate criticisms of Israel's brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. (And note that there is parallel antisemitism in the Trump orbit, with Trump himself trafficking in troubling tropes about Jews.) Top universities amplify their own elitism when they admit more students from the top 1% than from the bottom 50%, as some do. Admission preferences based on legacy, sports and faculty parents perpetuate an unfair educational aristocracy. Yet Trump is not encouraging debate on these issues. Rather, like autocrats in China, Hungary and Russia, he's trying to crush independent universities that might challenge his misrule. One difference is that China, while repressing universities, at least has been smart enough to protect and boost academic scientific research because it recognizes that this work benefits the entire nation. I hope voters understand that Trump's retaliatory funding freeze primarily strikes not Harvard's main campus but researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School. The university has 162 Nobel Prize winners, and scientists there are working on cancer immunotherapy, brain tumors, organ transplants, diabetes and more. It was a Harvard researcher who discovered the molecule that is the basis for the GLP-1 weight-loss medications that have revolutionized obesity care. Programs now facing funding cuts address pediatric cancer and treatment for veterans. The federal government already issued a 'stop-work order' on Harvard research on Lou Gehrig's disease. The upshot is that Trump's lust for power and vengeance may one day be measured by more Americans dying of cancer, heart disease and other ailments. All this illuminates an administration that is not only authoritarian but also reckless; this is vandalism of the American project. That is why this moment is a test of our ability to step up and protect our national greatness from our national leader.
