Police have arrested a 36-year-old man in the ambush shooting of two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies earlier this month, Fox11 reports.
Deonte Lee Murray, a convicted felon, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempted murder of a peace officer and possession of a firearm by a felon.
The Sept. 12 ambush set off a massive manhunt.
Surveillance video from the incident shows a gunman walking up to the passenger door of the squad car outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Transit Center and opening fire.
The deputies were rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition. Both survived and have since been released.
The sheriff’s department arrested Murray two weeks ago in connection with a separate carjacking. But officials at the time said it was not related to the ambush case.
The suspect in the shooting fled in a black Mercedes Benz sedan. Investigators discovered that type of vehicle had been stolen Sept. 1 in a carjacking where the driver was shot. Photographs of the carjacking suspect seemed to match images from the ambush, said Capt. Kent Wegener, the head of the sheriff’s homicide bureau, strengthening a connection between the two cases.
"We knew that he was a violent offender, was accused of stealing a black Mercedes-Benz and lived in the area. However, there was insufficient evidence to support an arrest, much less a criminal filing for the charge of attempted murder on a peace officer and to label him in the media as the person responsible," the sheriff's homicide captain said.
"Additionally, bringing the public focus on him at that point of the investigation may have influenced the pending witness interviews and further compromised the mission of solving the attempted murder of the deputies," he said. "As the investigation progressed, we gathered sufficient evidence to substantiate not only the arrest but the filing of criminal charges in this case.''
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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