The half brother of Robert Fuller, a young black man found hanging from a tree near a Southern California city hall, was killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in a shootout Wednesday, officials say.
According to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Terron Jammal Boone matched the description of a suspect in a kidnapping and domestic assault. Department detectives followed Boone in an attempt to make a traffic stop once they identified him, the statement said.
When the vehicle stopped, Boone opened the front passenger door and fired multiple shots at officers with a handgun, according to the department.
An officer on the scene responded by shooting Boone several times in the upper torso, killing him, officials say.
Authorities said a female driver and a 7-year-old girl were also in the vehicle. The unidentified driver was struck by gunfire and later released from the hospital, and the girl was unharmed, according to the department.
Boone had been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment, domestic violence and criminal threats in Los Angeles County Superior Court the day before his death, the Associated Press reported.
Boone’s relationship to the woman and the girl were not clarified by the sheriff’s department, but the woman was not the accuser in the spousal assault matter, according to the AP.
A handgun was found on the scene and no deputies were harmed in the gunshot exchange, the sheriff’s department said.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Information Bureau said in an early-morning statement that it was waiting on coroner and family identification, but an attorney for the family told CNN that the family knows it was Boone who died.
“This afternoon I had to notify the sisters of Robert Fuller that their half brother Terron Jammal Boone was killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Kern County,” Jamon Hicks told the outlet in a statement.
Hicks did not immediately return a request for comment from The Washington Post, but he told CNN that the family and his legal team would not provide additional comment on the incident until they receive all the information about it.
“The family respectfully asks that their privacy be respected,” Hicks told CNN.
The news of Boone’s death comes a little more than a week after his half brother’s body was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale, Calif.
Authorities initially ruled Fuller’s death a suicide, but that conclusion was rejected by his family members, who assert that he was not suicidal, a point his sister, Diamond Alexander, emphasized at a Saturday rally in front of Palmdale City Hall calling for answers.
“We want to find out the truth of what really happened. Everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right,” she told the crowd, according to the Los Angeles Times. “My brother was not suicidal. My brother was a survivor.”
State and federal officials will now oversee an investigation of Fuller’s death, as well as the death of 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch, a homeless black man who was found hanging from a tree in Victorville, Calif., late last month, according to the AP.
Sheriffs in both areas said they are committed to investigating the deaths, despite asserting no evidence of foul play, the AP reported.
