The first person was stabbed shortly before noon Friday, on the edge of downtown L.A.’s skid row.

As police headed toward 7th and San Julian streets, a second stabbing was reported just a few blocks away. Soon there was a third, witnessed by other officers at 6th and San Pedro streets — in between the other stabbing scenes, right by the Midnight Mission.

Jay Hernandez said he was walking by the mission when he saw a man slash and stab at two other people. When officers approached him, Hernandez said, they told the man to drop the weapon.

“He didn’t drop it,” he said.


A section of skid row is barricaded after stabbings that left three people injured. Police say they saw the third attack and wounded the assailant. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Police ultimately shot and wounded the man, ending a chaotic afternoon episode that stretched across several blocks of skid row and sent four people to the hospital. Three people were critically wounded in the stabbings, Los Angeles police said. The man shot by police was in surgery late Friday afternoon.

The motive for the stabbings was not immediately clear. Investigators fanned out across the crime scenes, interviewing witnesses and trying to determine if the suspect in the third attack — the man shot by police — was responsible for the others, said Sgt. Barry Montgomery, a police spokesman.

“We have three active crime scenes going,” he said.


No officers were injured. Montgomery said some type of edged weapon was found at the scene of the shooting. Police did not identify the person who was shot or any of the stabbing victims.

A small crowd gathered at the edge of the yellow police tape near where the shooting took place, not far from the homeless men and women lingering around the entrance of the Midnight Mission. Tents lined the sidewalks. Skid row, a 50-block neighborhood with an estimated population of 10,000, is widely known as the epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles.

At the scene, some relayed what they had seen in the moments leading up to the gunfire.

One man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Riccolo, said he saw two men arguing outside the mission shortly after noon. Riccolo said he did not know the men or what they were fighting about and could not see a weapon.


Riccolo said he saw officers fire five shots at one of the men “until the body stopped moving.”

Location of Friday’s shooting by police on skid row. (Joe Fox / Los Angeles Times)

Another witness, Miguel Mendez, said he was riding by on a skateboard when he saw police confront a man holding a knife. Mendez did not see any stabbings. But, he said, there was “blood everywhere.”

Mendez questioned why the officers did not use a stun gun to subdue the man, saying he did not see him move toward them with the knife.


Interactions between officers and the city’s homeless residents often draw scrutiny, a product of lingering tensions between police, homeless Angelenos and their advocates over how to best approach skid row, where people often struggle with mental illness or drug use.

Many residents and activists still lament the 2015 shooting of Charly Leundeu Keunang, a 43-year-old man known as Africa who was killed after police say he reached for an officer’s holstered gun. That shooting was captured on video by a bystander and viewed around the world after it was posted on social media. Homeless advocates also frequently cite a mentally ill homeless man who fell to his death from a downtown rooftop in 2014 after an officer used a Taser on him.

Friday’s incident came just days after the L.A. Police Commission held a special meeting on homelessness, where police, homeless advocates and others all agreed that law enforcement alone could not solve the city’s homeless problems.

Marcus Butler, the Midnight Mission’s director of security, said several employees heard Friday’s shooting but none witnessed the altercation. Butler said he did not think the encounter would exacerbate the longstanding tensions between skid row and the police.


“From what we’ve gathered so far, it’s not going to be as bad as it could be,” Butler said. “He was attacking the community.”

kate.mather@latimes.com

james.queally@latimes.com

For more breaking crime news in Southern California, follow us on Twitter: @katemather and @JamesQueallyLAT


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UPDATES:

6:35 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with some additional details about the shooting.

2:25 p.m. This article was updated with more details from the LAPD.

1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with details from other witnesses.


1:05 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details from police about the shooting as well as a comment from a man who said he witnessed people fighting before the shooting.

This story was originally published at 12:40 p.m.