UPDATE, SEPT. 13, 9:41 A.M.: The 76-year-old man who died in his Garden Grove backyard Friday morning after taking beanbag rounds from police officers and a self-inflicted regular gunshot to the head has been identified as Edward Lee Royle. Royle, who family members later said was despondent and suicidal over health woes, had pointed a handgun at officers before they fired the beanbags and he shot himself, according to police.
The Orange County
District Attorney's office is investigating.
]
ORIGINAL POST, SEPT. 9, 12:59 P.M.: Officers called by family members this morning to a Garden Grove
residence where a 76-year-old man with a handgun was talking suicide
tried to negotiate with him in the backyard before he pointed the weapon
at nearby cops, gunfire was exchanged and the elderly man was killed,
police say. The family told officers the unidentified man was despondent
over medical problems, according to a statement from Garden Grove
Police
Lt. Robert Fowler.
This all began with the 7:37 a.m. call from the 6000 block of Killarney Avenue, where family members claimed the man was threatening to kill himself with a handgun.
Confronting the man in the backyard of his residence, officers tried to talk him down while police negotiators were en route, states Fowler, who adds the help did not arrive before the man pointed his gun at nearby officers, fired and then shot himself.
“The cause of death is unknown at this time; however, the victim appears to have suffered impacts from less-lethal weapons, as well as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,” reads a statement from the lieutenant.
As is routine in officer-involved shootings, the Orange County
District Attorney's office is investigating.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.