A retired veteran Long Beach police sergeant took his life outside the department’s East Division stationhouse Wednesday morning, police said.

Don Campbell, 60, was found with a gunshot wound to the upper torso in the parking lot of the substation on Willow Street near Grand Avenue at 10:47 a.m., said police spokeswoman Arantxa Chavarria.

Paramedics pronounced Campbell dead at the scene, she said, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is handling the death investigation at the request of the Police Department.

The Long Beach Police Officers’ Association mourned him in a Facebook post, saying he was a “beloved officer and supervisor” who led the department’s Gang Detail.

Campbell retired from a 28-year career with the Police Department in December 2017, according to a biography.

He worked numerous assignments, including patrol, field training, special enforcement and SWAT before he was promoted to sergeant in 2000. Campbell spent the last 14 years of his career with the Gang Enforcement Section, the biography states.

Campbell received numerous Police Department awards over the years, including the Richard Rose Career Achievement Award in 2012.

In 2002, he received a Meritorious Award for his involvement in the resolution of a hostage situation in which two girls were rescued. Two years earlier, Campbell received another award for shooting and killing a man who was waving a gun on a crowded Metro Blue Line train and pointing it at responding officers and passengers who were trying to escape.

Campbell was nominated for the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor, the nation’s highest honor for public safety officers, according to the biography.

He lived in Lakewood.