2013 Southern California shootings

2013 Southern California shootings
Location	Irvine, California, Corona, California, Riverside County, California
Date	Started: February 3, 2013 (2013-02-03)
Target	Police officers and their families
Attack type	Shooting spree, murder
Weapon(s)	Firearms
Deaths	3
Injured	2
Suspected perpetrator	Christopher Jordan Dorner

In February 2013, there were a series of shootings in the American state of California where the victims were police or related to police personnel. Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, an ex-Navy Reservist and former Los Angeles police officer, was named as a suspect wanted in connection to a series of shootings that occurred throughout Southern California that killed three people and wounded three others. In a manifesto posted online, Dorner declared "unconventional and asymmetric warfare" upon the Los Angeles Police Department, their families, and their associates over what he described as his unfair dismissal from the police force in 2008.

During the manhunt, police shot and injured at least two people unrelated to Dorner in vehicles similar to his.

Suspect

Christopher Jordan Dorner (born June 4, 1979) was born in New York state and grew up in Los Angeles County, where he attended elementary school at Norwalk Christian School. Dorner stated that he was the only African American student there from first grade to seventh grade and that he had altercations due to his race. When he was a teenager, Dorner decided to become a police officer and joined a youth program offered by the Police Department in La Palma.

Dorner graduated from Southern Utah University in 2001, with a major in political science and a minor in psychology. While there, he was a football running back from 1999 to 2000. Dorner is a former Naval Reserve lieutenant who was once deployed to Bahrain. During his time as a reservist, he received a ribbon for marksmanship and a medal for pistol expertise. At the time of the shootings, Christopher Dorner lived in La Palma. Neighbors described him as a member of an admired, well-liked family who usually kept to himself. Dorner was married, but has no children. Court records show his wife filed for divorce in 2007.

Career with LAPD

Dorner joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 2005, and completed police academy training in 2006. He was deployed as a reservist to Bahrain for 13 months shortly afterward, and on his return was paired with Sergeant Teresa Evans to complete his probationary training. Dorner, while still a probationary officer, filed a complaint accusing Evans of kicking Christopher Gettler, a mentally disabled suspect, during an arrest. The LAPD investigated the complaint. Three hotel employees who witnessed "most" of the incident who were interviewed by LAPD detectives claimed that they did not see the training officer kick the man. The man was brought to the police station and given medical treatment for injuries to his face, but he did not mention being kicked at that time. However, some time later, the father of the suspect said that his son told him that an officer had kicked him. Dorner was dismissed in 2008 for "making false statements about his training officer".

Shootings

On February 1, Anderson Cooper of CNN received at his office a package containing a DVD that states Dorner's case against the LAPD. The package also contained a bullet-ridden Challenge coin issued by LAPD Chief William Bratton and a note inscribed with "1MOA" (1 Minute of Angle), implying that the coin was shot at 100m.

Dorner is wanted in connection with shootings in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside.

In the city of Irvine, in the evening hours of February 3, 2013, 28-year-old Monica Quan, and her fiance, 27-year-old Keith Lawrence, were found shot to death in Lawrence's parked car, outside their condominium complex. Quan, an assistant women's basketball coach at Cal State Fullerton, was the daughter of Randal Quan, a former Los Angeles Police Department captain and lawyer who formerly represented Dorner during Dorner's dismissal hearing from the LAPD.

On February 4, a manifesto was published online, purportedly by Dorner, outlining his experiences and stating his motives for the shootings as being to clear his name. In it he wrote, "I will not be alive to see my name cleared. That's what this is about, my name." Dorner's manifesto had also specifically named Randal Quan and his family as targets, so Irvine police named Dorner as the primary suspect in the murders of Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence on the afternoon of February 6, 2013. Threats made against specific LAPD officers have been redacted by media sources at the request of law enforcement who have cited officer safety concerns.

Manhunt

In the wake of the Quan-Lawrence shooting and the posting of Dorner's manifesto, law enforcement mounted a widespread manhunt for Dorner that spread from California to include Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico.

At approximately 1:30 am on February 7, two LAPD officers were driving to a protection detail where they were assigned as security for one of the officers potentially targeted by Dorner, when they were flagged down by a civilian. The person who flagged them down reported seeing a man matching Dorner's description at a gas station in Corona. The officers investigated the report, and they were following a pickup truck when the driver stopped, got out, and fired a rifle at them, grazing the head of one officer.

Shortly after that incident, two police officers were ambushed while stopped in their marked patrol unit at a red light in the city of Riverside. One officer (as yet unnamed) died shortly after the shooting; the other was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition for surgery but recovered.

On February 7, the burning remains of Dorner's vehicle, a dark gray 2005 Nissan Titan truck, were located on a remote fire trail near Big Bear Lake, about 80 miles from Los Angeles. Investigators spread out to search for Dorner in the surrounding area, and about 125 officers went door to door. All schools in the Bear Valley Unified School District were placed into a state of lockdown.

Military sources state that on February 5, Dorner checked into Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, but skipped check out procedures when leaving.

Protection details were set up for over 40 potential targets of Dorner's, and thousands of police were assigned to patrol Southern California's highways. LAPD also took police off of motorcycles to protect them.

Civilian shootings by police

In two separate incidents in the early morning hours of February 7, 2013, police shot at people in trucks similar to the one Dorner was thought to be driving. Dorner was not present at either incident.

At about 5:30 am, Los Angeles Police Department officers on a protection detail of an unnamed LAPD official's residence in the Los Angeles County city of Torrance opened fire on a light blue Toyota Tacoma and shot two female occupants who were delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Times. The vehicle, according to officers, matched the description of Dorner's 2005 dark gray Nissan Titan and was moving without its headlights on. A neighbor said the truck was used every day to deliver newspapers, and the women who used it kept their headlights off in order not to wake people up. The two women were injured but are expected to survive.

Approximately 25 minutes after that incident, another shooting occurred involving officers from the Hollywood Division of the LAPD, but there were no reported injuries. Like the first shooting, the incident involved a vehicle resembling the description of Dorner's truck, but was later discovered to be a black Honda Ridgeline driven by people unassociated with Dorner.