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December 11, 2024
By Brian Hews
Los Cerritos Community News has learned additional information about the carjacking and subsequent barricade incident that occurred in Cerritos Monday night.
The incident started at 7:25 PM when a Cerritos resident pulled into her driveway at her home.
A 35-year-old male suspect from Los Angeles pulled a handgun out and took her car. Shaken, the woman was able to call the Cerritos Sheriff’s to report the incident. When the deputies were at her house, they got a call regarding a crash at Carmenita and the 91 freeway in Cerritos involving the woman’s stolen car.
The suspect fled the crash scene on foot and attempted to hijack a second car but failed, running into the neighborhood behind the US Post Office near 183rd and Carmenita.
By then, the sheriff’s helicopter was in the area and located the suspect in a backyard on the 13400 block of Elgers. The suspect ran down the street, broke a sliding glass door, and barricaded himself in the house; the owner was able to escape safely.
The deputies surrounded the house and took evacuation measures on the block. They tried to talk the suspect out of the house with no success, so the deputies called in the Sheriff’s Special Weapons and Tactics [SWAT] along with hostage negotiators, but the suspect refused to come out.
Finally, SWAT used a drone to look into the house, where they found the suspect in a back room. The SWAT team rushed the house and took the suspect into custody without incident.
The incident took nearly 12 hours, ending at 5 AM.
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