Police said Lira was also linked to the murder of another man earlier this week (Performance)
Police killed a wanted man in a “shootout” in central California, and three police officers were injured in the shootout in the vineyard where he was found Thursday afternoon, officials said .
Mason James Lira, 26, who the sheriff’s documents mention as transient, is suspected of having shot and injured another officer at the Paso Robles police headquarters in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
According to media reports, the officer was shot in the face and was flown to the hospital, where he was in serious but stable condition.
Police and law enforcement officers searched for the shooter and on Thursday afternoon received a call that a second officer had been gunned down in a vineyard near Highway 101 in San County Luis Obispo.
Several law enforcement agencies from the region rushed to the scene and two other police officers were wounded by gunshots. Specific details were not available late Thursday evening.
The injured were evacuated and other officers fired shots at the suspect, Lira, and he was shot dead, police said.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately disclose the names and condition of the injured officers.
Police said Lira was also linked to the murder of another man earlier this week, whose body was found near an Amtrak station in Paso Robles, about 190 miles north of Los Angeles.
Paso Robles, a community of about 32,000 people on the scenic central coast of California roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, is best known for its vineyards.
(Report by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Maria Caspani in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta; edited by Bernadette Baum & Simon Cameron-Moore)
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
