Man Hunting Ex-L.A. Cop Is Shot To Death Gunman Kills Man In Halfway House After Injuring Two Women Outside

A man believed to be looking for a former police sergeant involved in the Rodney King beating case burst into a halfway house Thursday and killed a man before being shot to death by police.

The gunman, whose name was not released, also shot a woman on the street and struck another woman with his gun before entering the home, authorities said.

The bullet grazed the woman’s head, and the wound wasn’t considered life-threatening.

Former Sgt. Stacey Koon, the man’s alleged target, was spending the day with his family and was not at the Re-Entry Community Corrections Center when the man burst in, his lawyer Ira Salzman said.

Koon is serving out the last part of his sentence there for violating King’s civil rights during a 1991 during a traffic stop. He and three other white officers were videotaped beating King, who is black.

The gunman, a black man in his 30s, burst into the halfway house in the afternoon, resident Clinton Cooper said.

“I was in the back room when he came in, he had one of the staff members around the throat and a gun at his waist,” Cooper said. “The staff member started talking to him, and he got him out of the room long enough for me to get out of the window and go call 911.”

The gunman killed a 60-year-old man in the house. A SWAT team stormed in after hearing a shot and the gunman screaming that he was going to shoot someone else, sheriff’s spokesman Mark Lohman said.

“The man fired a couple of rounds at them, and then they returned fire,” he said.

Koon and three other white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of King.

Koon and Officer Laurence Powell were convicted of violating King’s constitutional rights.