The Saturday shooting that killed Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell in Los Angeles is being investigated as a murder, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
(Bloomberg) — The Saturday shooting that killed Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell in Los Angeles is being investigated as a murder, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
O’Connell, a 69-year-old native of Ireland who served several parishes in South LA, was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound on Saturday afternoon in the Hacienda Heights neighborhood, according to the statement. No additional information was available.
Homicide rates spiked in LA during the pandemic along with other types of crime and have fallen slightly since. There have been 33 homicides in LA in the year through Feb. 11, according to statistics compiled by the police department, down 30% from this time last year.
O’Connell spent most of his four decades as a priest ministering to Catholics in the inner city, including areas near the riots that followed the beating by police of Rodney King in 1992, according to an article in the Angelus, the newsletter serving the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. O’Connell was named an auxiliary archbishop in 2015 by Pope Francis.
“He was a peacemaker with a heart for the poor and the immigrant, and he had a passion for building a community where the sanctity and dignity of every human life was honored and protected,” LA Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a statement.
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