A 33-year-old man who police say was swinging a metal baseball bat at cars and pedestrians in the West Adams area has been identified by the county medical examiner as Alejandro Lopez Garcia, days after officers shot and killed him near a gas station at Normandie Avenue and Washington Boulevard. The identification, confirmed on August 10, came roughly a week and a half after the July 29 shooting that has drawn the LAPD's Force Investigation Division into a full administrative and criminal review.
According to MyNewsLA.com, LAPD Olympic Station officers responded around 6:25 p.m. to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon at the gas station. Officers arrived to find Lopez Garcia allegedly armed with the bat. Per LAPD, he had already struck multiple occupied vehicles, shattering their windows, and attempted to strike passing community members. Emergency 911 calls had begun coming in around 6:30 p.m. reporting a man threatening pedestrians and striking cars near that intersection before moving south toward the Interstate 10 underpass, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Officers Say Man Ignored Orders to Drop Bat
An LAPD overhead air unit reported that Lopez Garcia was walking southbound on Normandie Avenue beneath the 10 Freeway, per the department. Officers caught up with him there, and per LAPD, he refused verbal direction to drop the weapon and instead raised the bat with both hands into a swinging position while continuing to advance toward the officers. That is when officers opened fire, striking him once with a gunshot wound to the upper body, according to the same account relayed by the outlet.
Officers rendered aid to Lopez Garcia before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No civilians or officers were injured in the shooting, per LAPD. Aerial news footage from that evening showed police tape and an LAPD presence at a Shell gas station near Venice Boulevard, up the street from the underpass where the shooting occurred, as reported by CBS Los Angeles.
Bat Booked Into Evidence as Investigation Opens
The LAPD's Force Investigation Division, which is automatically assigned to investigate all categorical uses of force including fatal officer-involved shootings, opened a formal inquiry under file number NRF030-26eo, per an LAPD news release. Investigators booked the 35-inch aluminum softball bat recovered at the scene into evidence, the department said. The division is tasked with collecting physical evidence, analyzing forensics, and conducting officer interviews before findings move up the chain.
Those findings will eventually be reviewed by the Use of Force Review Board, the Chief of Police, and the civilian Board of Police Commissioners, which holds final authority to determine whether the officers' tactics and use of deadly force complied with department policy. Representatives from the independent Office of the Inspector General also respond directly to officer-involved shooting scenes to monitor evidence collection in real time, according to LAPD procedures.
What the Law Requires Investigators to Determine
Under California Assembly Bill 392, which amended Penal Code Section 835a in 2020, peace officers may use deadly force only when they reasonably believe, based on the totality of the circumstances, that such force is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. That heightened standard, which raised the bar from merely “reasonable” to “necessary” force, is the framework investigators must apply in reviewing whether officers had other options that evening.
Open questions remain about whether officers deployed less-lethal tools, such as Tasers or 40mm foam launchers, before firing their weapons, and whether they attempted verbal de-escalation while backing away from Lopez Garcia. Those details are expected to become clearer once body-worn camera footage, 911 audio, and dispatch logs are released. Under Board of Police Commissioners policy and state law, that critical-incident material must be made public within 45 days of the shooting.
Latest in a String of Weapon Calls Near Normandie Avenue
The shooting adds to a recent pattern of LAPD Olympic Division responses to people wielding non-firearm weapons in public traffic areas along the same corridor. In a separate May shooting on the 7600 block of Normandie Avenue, officers shot a knife-wielding burglary suspect who survived after being hospitalized, according to FOX 11 Los Angeles. And in June 2025, Olympic Division officers shot a man near St. Andrews Place and West 18th Street after he allegedly pointed a weapon at passing vehicles, a case Hoodline also covered at the time.
