The half brother of Robert Fuller, a young Black man who was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale last week, was shot dead by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies during a shootout Wednesday afternoon in Kern County, according to law enforcement sources and an attorney for the family.
The shooting occurred about 4:30 p.m. in a parking lot in Rosamond, a community about 20 miles north of Palmdale. The killing came as activists and community members have been openly critical of how Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies handled the investigation into Fuller’s death.
Lt. Robert Westphal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the fatal shooting occurred during a kidnapping and assault investigation that is being handled by the department’s major-crimes bureau.
Westphal did not identify the man who was fatally shot. Jamon Hicks, an attorney for the Fuller family, confirmed that the man killed by deputies was Terron Boone.
Court records show that Boone was charged Tuesday with multiple criminal counts including criminal threats, assault, false imprisonment and domestic violence.
On Wednesday afternoon, Westphal said detectives trailed the car that the suspect was riding in and followed it back to an apartment complex in Rosamond. The deputies attempted a traffic stop.
The suspect, later identified as Boone, exited the car’s passenger side and opened fire, according to Westphal, who said the suspect fired at least five shots toward the detectives. Deputies returned fire and shot him the chest, killing him, according to Westphal.
The woman driving the car was shot once in the chest and taken to a local hospital, where she was treated and released Wednesday night. A 7-year-old girl was in the car’s back seat but was not injured in the gunfire, Westphal said. The child’s relationship to the other two people in the car was unclear.
Detectives recovered a semiautomatic handgun at the scene.
None of the detectives nor their vehicles were equipped with cameras, but investigators are trying to recover footage from Ring cameras and other home video systems in the area, Westphal said.
Surveillance video of the incident posted by the Rosamond Community Watchdog, a local news platform, showed multiple vehicles trailing a dark SUV into a housing complex parking lot. Voices repeatedly shouted, “Hands up!” before gunfire erupted.
Siara Anderson said she was on the balcony of an apartment building adjacent to the parking lot in the 3400 block of 15th Street West when Boone was shot. Anderson said that she heard four or five gunshots and saw a man slumped in the passenger seat of a blue sport utility vehicle, clearly dead.
Law enforcement officers, in plainclothes but wearing bulletproof vests, were at the scene, she said, along with about five unmarked police cars.
Hicks, the attorney representing the Fuller family, said relatives and the legal team had no further comment on the incident.
“The family respectfully asks that their privacy be respected. Our prayers remain with the Fuller family,” Hicks said in a statement.
Fuller was discovered hanging from a tree in a Palmdale park on June 10, and the initial cause of death was listed as suicide. But after protests, sheriff’s officials said they would do a full investigation, with assistance from the FBI and state attorney general.
Thousands protested this weekend at the park, with some describing racial incidents in the Antelope Valley and raising concerns over whether Fuller was lynched.
“This is really crazy to all of us,” Fuller’s sister Diamond Alexander said. “We want to find out the truth of what really happened. Everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right.
“To be here, staring at this tree, it don’t make no sense,” Alexander added. “My brother was not suicidal. My brother was a survivor.”
Fuller’s family and friends described him as a peacemaker, a street-smart man with shoulder-length dreadlocks and a bright smile who loved music, anime and video games and mostly stayed to himself. Days before he died, he attended a Black Lives Matter protest.
