00:00Well, good morning to everybody, and I want to thank you for being here, one, and your patience and waiting for us.
00:12We've been very busy, as you can imagine, over the last several hours.
00:18I'll be the only one speaking today, and I'll be answering your questions after I speak.
00:23But if you look around me, the team that I have, that I'm surrounded by, members of the board, my partner, Jim McDonnell from the LAPD, Tony Maroney from L.A. County Fire, CHP, I could go on and on, and I'll talk about some of that as we go on.
00:42So it is somewhat of a beautiful day today, weather-wise, but there's definitely a black cloud hanging over the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and our county family.
00:54This morning, shortly after 7.30 a.m., an explosion occurred at our Special Enforcement Bureau.
01:03Arson Explosives Detail Facility located in the 1,000 block of Northeastern Avenue in East Los Angeles, which is right behind this hill.
01:12Tragically, there were three sworn members who were fatally killed that were assigned to our arson explosives detail.
01:23No other department members were injured or transported to any hospitals.
01:30This is, unfortunately, the largest loss of life for us as the L.A. County Sheriff's Department since 1857.
01:40Between all three sworn members, they had served our community proudly for 74 years, and that's amongst all three of them collectively.
01:5219 years, 22 years, and 33 years.
01:56One of the reasons it took me a while to get out here, one of my priorities is the families of our deputies, and I've met with several of them this morning.
02:15There are still others who are on their way.
02:18There are others who have not been notified.
02:20The last thing I want to do is them to turn on the news and find out that way.
02:26So thank you for respecting that at this point.
02:29My second priority were our employees.
02:32Our employees are hurting right now.
02:35Members of our Special Enforcement Bureau, other members of our arson detail as well, arson explosives detail.
02:43So in regards to the details of what happened, I'm going to give you what I have right now.
02:55There's a lot more that we don't know than what we do know.
02:59But our intent is to look at this from the very beginning and figure out what is it exactly that caused this tragic event.
03:11Currently, our homicide detectives are on scene, and they are investigating the deaths that are being, and we are being assisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
03:21who are investigating the post-blast portion of this incident.
03:27You have seen other vehicles other than FBI.
03:31You've seen the ATF here.
03:33They will be assisting the FBI as well.
03:36I am very grateful to the bomb squad of the Los Angeles Police Department, and I mentioned Chief Jim McDonald standing behind me here.
03:46They immediately came out to assist after this explosion occurred to render the devices safe.
03:54And just so all of you know, they were just rendered safe within the last minutes, right before we walked out here.
04:03So it was still an active scene.
04:07It wasn't stable, and definitely a very active crime scene as we go forward.
04:14At this time, we do not know the cause of the explosion.
04:20However, this specific area has been closed off due to the ongoing investigation.
04:26We believe there is no threat to this community.
04:30Actually, I can tell you there is no threat to this community.
04:33This is an isolated incident, and again, no threats.
04:38We have road closures, Eastern Boulevard, between Blatchard Street and Lotta Drive.
04:44And again, I do want to thank all of our local partners, our local elected officials that are here to help us get through this very difficult time.
04:57We have our psychological services bureau personnel on scene that are assisting our employees at this moment, along with peer counseling and chaplain services.
05:08And as I said earlier, I have met with two of the three families thus far.
05:13And as you can imagine, those were extremely challenging conversations.
05:20So anyways, ready for questions.
05:23Sheriff, what was the material that they were actively dealing?
05:27What type of an island?
05:28It provided explosive military exposure.
05:31The second question, what were the attempts to improve and transported or rendering change here on the spot?
05:38Those are all good questions that Pete just asked.
05:42Now that the investigation has started, now that the investigators can actually get in to the scene that it was just rendered safe,
05:51we will be able to answer all those questions too early right now to be able to answer that.
05:57Were there other military style of military raid explosives nearby that were rendered safe by the L.A.?
06:05We will know that, hopefully in the next couple of hours.
06:11Sheriff, were they moving this explosive from one place to another?
06:15Were they investigating existing explosives already in the facility?
06:18So what type of, why were they, what were they doing?
06:22All these questions are really good questions.
06:24And they're the questions that we have as well.
06:27The investigation is just about to get started on all this.
06:31And these are all the questions that we're going to want answers to.
06:37And we'll get them.
06:38But simply, right now, I wanted to get out here.
06:41I know all of you have been waiting for a while.
06:42I'm giving you the information I have, and we're not there yet.
06:46Can you say something Spanish for us please?
06:48Let's wait for the English, and then we'll do the Spanish afterward, if that's okay.
06:51Sheriff Luna, are we able to say this?
06:53We heard that someone was injured as well, and came to the hospital.
06:57Are you able to say it's not a person?
07:02Earlier, we had three fatalities of our employees, which I call heroes, or very heroic in the work that they do.
07:11We had no other injuries other than the three fatalities.
07:16And just so all of you know, the members of this team, I've heard over and over the word elite being used.
07:26I think sometimes that term gets overused.
07:29But if you're familiar with our Special Enforcement Bureau, they're the best of the best.
07:35And the individuals who work our arson explosives detail, they have years of training.
07:43And these members, usually, the average calls that they go to in dealing with some very dangerous situations or items, average about 1,100 per year.
07:58So these aren't people who don't do this very often.
08:01They are fantastic experts.
08:03And unfortunately, I lost three of them today.
08:07Sheriff, regarding what happened here, why were the security across that team and the responsibility that they were in this season?
08:16When all the first moment, you can make a closer to a lot of ways to go to this team.
08:22Why would you not run out there?
08:24Why would you run out there?
08:26Why would you run out there?
08:26Why would you run out there?
08:27Why would you run out there?
08:28Why would you run out there?
08:29Why would you run out there?
08:30Those are all questions, Pete, that we're going to get to.
08:32We need to go from A to Z to know exactly what happened.
08:36That's why we have our partners here from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that will be conducting the post-blast.
08:43There will be a lot of details coming out there eventually.
08:48ATF is here to assist them, the national response team.
08:52These are individuals that have a lot of expertise in what they do.
08:56And again, all the questions being asked, very good questions.
08:59But if I waited to get the answers to those, I'd be here probably in two days.
09:03And I'm just trying to get out here in front of all of you.
09:06Are you doing a procession for these all of the deputies here or other people to come out before you?
09:12The question is, are we anticipating a procession for our three heroic deputies who passed away?
09:20And the answer to that is yes.
09:22There will be a procession.
09:23I don't have any specific information on that, but it will happen in the next several hours.
09:29I don't have the answers to those questions.
09:59And again, getting out here, trying to be out here at this time to inform all of you, our community,
10:06to know what we know at this time was very important.
10:10Again, all of you are amazing.
10:12You're asking very important questions.
10:14And we're going to get the answers, I think, to, if not everything, to most of them.
10:18But we just simply don't have that information at this time.
10:21There is currently an investigation going on to determine what happened from the very beginning to the end.
10:33I know everybody wants answers.
10:35Please understand, we just rendered the scene safe within the last 30 minutes.
10:40It's the LAPD bomb squad rendered the scene safe.
10:44We have to go back, investigate what happened from the very beginning, and we'll get there.
10:51Just not going to happen this soon.
10:52I would be very irresponsible to try and answer a lot of these questions without the information that I need to positively give you facts.
11:02And I don't have the facts at this point.
11:03Sheriff, we understand that you're telling us everything you can tell us, and we understand we've got to wait.
11:08By when, roughly, do you think you can have another press conference to tell us more information?
11:14We'll, through our Sheriff's Information Bureau, we'll put something out in the next couple of hours of when we would have more information.
11:24But I'm going to tell you right now, based on my experience, when we're conducting these type of investigations,
11:30it doesn't take hours to get some of this information.
11:34It takes days and weeks.
11:35We do not rush this investigation.
11:39We want to make sure that we're extremely thorough.
11:43Ladies and gentlemen, we lost three lives.
11:46And we want to make sure we know what happened.
11:50We don't want to repeat for this.
11:52And, again, all the questions that are being asked are very legitimate.
11:56There are other law enforcement agencies who have bomb techs, not only around the country, around the world, that want to know what happened here.
12:02So we want to make sure that no one else.
12:05We don't repeat this, right?
12:06So thorough investigation will be done by multiple agencies.
12:10And we'll get back to you about it.
12:13It sounds like everything is repeat questions about the incident.
12:16I can't answer any of those right now because we don't have those facts yet.
12:20So with that, thank you all, and then we'll keep you updated on any progress on anything else.
