Three detectives in an elite arson and explosives unit were killed when an explosion erupted at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department training facility in East LA on Friday morning, July 18.
The blast just before 7:30 a.m. at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training facility at 1060 N. Eastern Ave. resulted in the largest loss of life for the Sheriff’s Department in a single instance since 1857, Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference.
The detectives later were identified as Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus, and William Osborn, all assigned to the Arson Explosives Detail of the Special Enforcement Bureau.
Few details of what led to the explosion were initially available. Luna said a Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad had cleared the scene only minutes before the 11:45 a.m. news conference. And the sheriff cautioned that a full accounting of what led to the blast will likely take days or weeks to complete.
The explosion was an “isolated” occurrence, the sheriff said, and there is no ongoing danger to the public. But he also acknowledged, “There’s a lot more that we don’t know than what we do know.
“We lost three lives, and we want to make sure we know what happened,” Luna said. “We want to make sure we don’t repeat this.”
The scene was still active up until minutes before the late-morning press conference, with a Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad declaring the blast area safe, Luna said, adding that the investigation was in the beginning stages.
Various reports indicated the explosion may have involved materials found at a Santa Monica home on Thursday that were collected by sheriff’s bomb squad personnel.
A resident of that complex told KTLA5 at the scene that police and sheriff’s officials had been at the building Thursday to retrieve some old grenades that a tenant found in a storage unit, apparently left behind by a previous tenant.
A search on Friday afternoon prompted an evacuation of at least part of that apartment complex as investigators swept the property for any additional potentially dangerous materials.
Earlier, at the news conference, Luna described members of the Special Enforcement Bureau, where the explosion occurred, as being the “best of the best,” and the arson detail as an elite unit whose members average more than 1,000 calls a year.
Luna said the detectives had a collective 74 years of law enforcement experience, including a 19-year department member, a 22-year member and a 33-year veteran.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger on Friday afternoon ordered all flags in L.A. County to be lowered to half mast in honor of the three detectives.
Jason Zabala, director of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and a member of the sheriff’s SWAT team, became emotional as he talked about the loss of what he called some of the department’s finest detectives.
Zabala knew all three of the deceased, two of them since high school, he said.
“It’s something you realized from day one when you signed up for the job that you know, it’s gonna be a dangerous job,” he said. “As the years go on, you realize how dangerous it is. You do this job for a reason.”
He described the detectives killed in the explosion as “smart” and always “motivated to work.”
No one else was injured, Luna said.
Luna called Friday’s blast “the largest loss of life for us as the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department since 1857.”
That was when Sheriff James Barton and several members of his posse, including three deputies, were ambushed in present-day Santa Ana by criminals they were pursuing. Barton died just three weeks into his second term, according to a sheriff’s department online historical timeline.
Friday’s tragedy is believed to be the worst involving an L.A.-area law-enforcement bomb squad since a February 1986 explosion on Vanscoy Avenue in North Hollywood that killed two LAPD bomb squad members.
That blast took the lives of the head of the LAPD bomb squad and another veteran squad member who were attempting to defuse a booby-trapped pipe bomb in the garage of a home where, several hours earlier, a suspect had been removed in connection with an ambush shooting.
ABC Los Angeles, citing helicopter footage on Friday morning, said it appeared something had exploded next to a bomb squad vehicle.
LASD officials confirmed just before 10:30 a.m. that a “critical workplace incident” occurred at the facility and that the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the sheriff’s department were investigating.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X she spoke with U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli “about what appears to be a horrific incident that killed at least three at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles.”
She said federal agents were at the facility and working to learn more.
Saadullah Sheikh, a spokesman with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said firefighters were dispatched at 7:27 a.m. and arrived at the same time. That agency has a facility across the street from the sheriff’s training center.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X he had been briefed, was monitoring the situation and has “offered full assistance.”
“The thoughts of all Angelenos are with all of those impacted by this blast,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.
Los Angeles County supervisors Barger, Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn also put out statements saying they were closely tracking the situation.
“This is one more example of how tragic it is sometimes to be in public safety,” Barger said at the scene.
“I never got to say thank you to them, but now we have to honor them,” Solis said.
Around 5 p.m., a law enforcement procession began Friday to transfer the detectives’ bodies from the training center to the medical examiner’s office.
Dozens of sheriff’s deputies stood in formation and saluted as the bodies were carried to a trio of medical examiner vans for the journey.
The vans were then escorted by deputies and other law enforcement representatives on the drive.
City News Service contributed to this report.
