Three sheriff’s deputies were killed in an explosion on Friday morning at a law enforcement training center in Los Angeles, local and federal officials said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, which officials said occurred at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Biscailuz Training Academy center in East Los Angeles.
But a state official familiar with the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, called the explosion a tragic accident that appeared to have stemmed from the handling of on-site explosives.
There was no threat to the area, and the explosion was an isolated episode, said Sheriff Robert Luna of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Sheriff Luna said that the explosion at the training center occurred around 7:30 a.m. Pacific time. No one else was injured by the blast, he added.
The deputies, who have not been identified, were a part of the department’s arson-explosives unit, Sheriff Luna said. The deputies had been with the department for 19, 22 and 33 years. The sheriff said he was meeting with their families.
Members of that unit regularly handle dangerous situations or items, with an average of about 1,110 calls per year, he said.
“They are fantastic experts,” Sheriff Luna said, “and unfortunately, I lost three of them today.” He added that the deaths were the largest loss of life for the county sheriff’s department since 1857.
A formal law enforcement procession to escort the bodies and surviving relatives to the county medical examiner’s office was expected to occur later Friday.
The circumstances surrounding the blast were unclear. A Los Angeles County official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation said the three deputies were alone when the explosion occurred, leaving few witnesses to shed light on the cause.
A bomb squad with the Los Angeles Police Department rendered the scene safe by late Friday morning, Sheriff Luna said, allowing investigators to begin to gain access to the site.
“We have to go back, investigate what happened from the very beginning, and we’ll get there,” Sheriff Luna said.
Investigators with the F.B.I., as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and detectives with the county sheriff’s department were among those working at the site.
The training facility, named for Eugene Biscailuz, a long-serving sheriff who helped organize the California Highway Patrol and was its first superintendent, lies east of downtown Los Angeles. The site hosts, among other county offices, the sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau, a specialized unit that provides a range of tactical, rescue and counterterrorism support services throughout the county, including an explosives detail.
Friday’s explosion comes more than two years after a deadly episode at a training facility for the sheriff’s department. In November 2022, 25 recruits at an academy near the city of Whittier were injured while on a run after a driver going the wrong way ran into them. One of the recruits later died from his injuries, and the driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving.
The handling of explosives by police officers and sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles has led to problems in the past.
In June 2021, 17 people were injured when part of a cache of illegal fireworks blew up in South Los Angeles in what was meant to be a controlled detonation by bomb squad technicians. Those technicians worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, not the county sheriff’s department. Ten of the injured were law enforcement officers.
The explosion also caused extensive damage to more than 20 homes and over a dozen businesses. The Los Angeles Police Department later said personnel had incorrectly estimated the weight of the fireworks, and the city last year agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle claims by residents.
Ana Facio-Krajcer contributed reporting.
Jesus Jiménez is a Times reporter covering Southern California.
Tim Arango is a correspondent covering national news. He is based in Los Angeles.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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