Rooftop Shooting Detailed by Police

The Long Beach Police Department today released a detailed description of an officer-involved shooting on the roof of an apartment building that left a 19-year-old suspect dead.

Police conducted a traffic stop of a car with three occupants near 3rd Street and Walnut Avenue about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, interviewing a passenger who lied about his name and then ran.

The officers had seen the vehicle's driver commit two violations. They also had seen the same vehicle in the area a few hours before, and because of a significant number of burglaries and auto thefts in the area, they decided to investigate why the car was cruising the neighborhood.

While some officers chased the fleeing suspect, others remained behind and interviewed the other occupants, who provided police with the man's real name, Tyler Damon Woods.

A records check revealed Woods, a 19-year-old from Rialto, had a felony warrant for robbery. They also learned that the robbery was an armed carjacking in Los Angeles.

The officers next found Woods hiding in bushes on 4th Street, between Walnut and Nebraska avenues, but he successfully fled again.

Woods continued to move between buildings between 4th and 5th streets and Walnut to Nebraska avenues. A containment was set up and a police dog joined in the search. Warning residents to stay inside, the officers named the suspect and asked him to surrender.

For the next hour, Woods eluded his pursuers, but about 3:35 a.m. a police helicopter arrived and a resident called from the 1500 block of East 5th Street to report hearing someone on the roof., He said Woods could be hiding in the laundry room,

A Los Angeles Police Department helicopter located him on the roof of the building. Woods ran, jumping from roof to roof, and then jumped to the ground and ran into an apartment complex courtyard in the 400 block of Nebraska Avenue.

Woods tried to break into several homes in the complex, but ended up jumping fences and going to another complex.

A resident in that complex called police to say she had encountered the suspect on her balcony as she was leaving for work.

They found him on the roof, in a kneeling position. He began turning toward the police, and believing he was armed and dangerous they shot him -- believing he was about to shoot them.

Paramedics declared Woods dead at the scene.

Anyone with additional information on the case was asked to call Long Beach police detectives Teryl Hubert and Mark Bigel Guarino at (562) 570-7244.