3 Deputies Are Killed in Explosion at Los Angeles Training Center

It was not immediately clear what caused the blast at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Biscailuz Training Academy center. No one else was injured, officials said.

Three sheriff’s deputies were killed in an explosion on Friday morning at a law enforcement training center in Los Angeles, local and federal officials said.

The deaths were the largest loss of life for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department from a single episode since 1857, the authorities said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, which occurred at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Biscailuz Training Academy center in East Los Angeles. A state official familiar with the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation, called the explosion a tragic accident that appeared to have stemmed from the handling of on-site explosives.

There was no threat to the area, and the explosion was an isolated episode, said Sheriff Robert Luna.

He added that the explosion at the training center occurred around 7:30 a.m. Pacific time. No one else was injured by the blast, he said.

The sheriff’s department identified the deputies as Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Victor Lemus, and William Osborn. They were all assigned to the arson explosives unit, the department said in a statement.

Detective Kelley-Eklund joined the sheriff’s department in 2006 and served as a training officer and in the narcotics bureau before becoming an arson and explosives investigator in 2022, according to the statement. Detective Lemus joined the department in 2003 and served as a K-9 handler before becoming an arson and explosives investigator last year. Detective Osborn began his career with the department in 1992 and had been with the arson and explosives detail since 2019.

Members of that bomb squad unit regularly handle dangerous situations or items, with an average of about 1,110 calls per year, Sheriff Luna said.

“They are fantastic experts,” he said, “and unfortunately, I lost three of them today.”

The three deputies had responded on Thursday to a call in Santa Monica to assist the police there with explosive devices that had been found, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department.

The Sheriff’s Department said it was not clear if those devices were the ones responsible for Friday’s explosion. But homicide investigators were seeking a search warrant for the Santa Monica location and had evacuated residents there, Ms. Nishida said.

A Los Angeles County official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation said the three deputies had been alone when the explosion occurred, leaving few witnesses to shed light on the cause.

A bomb squad from the Los Angeles Police Department rendered the scene safe by late Friday morning, Sheriff Luna said, allowing investigators to begin to gain access to the site.

“We have to go back, investigate what happened from the very beginning, and we’ll get there,” he said.

Investigators with the F.B.I., as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and detectives with the Sheriff’s Department were among those working at the site. Sheriff Luna called the site of the explosion an “active crime scene” and said homicide investigators were there.

On Friday afternoon, a long procession of black-and-white sheriff’s cruisers and officers on motorcycles snaked up and then down a hill on a street near the training center, escorting three medical examiner vans from the site that were believed to contain the remains of the fallen deputies. Residents waving American flags looked on.

“I come from a military family, and we came to offer our condolences to the families of the three men,” said Analie Saavedra, 51, who lives near the training facility and brought her two young children. “It’s hard for my kids to know what happened today. I brought them here so they can pay their respects and know that the job they did was important.”

The training facility, named for Eugene Biscailuz, a long-serving sheriff who helped organize the California Highway Patrol and was its first superintendent, lies east of downtown Los Angeles. The site hosts, among other county offices, the sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau, a specialized unit that provides a range of tactical, rescue and counterterrorism support services throughout the county, including an explosives detail.

Several people who live near the training center said in interviews that they had not heard an explosion. Mandie Rios, who lives a couple of blocks from the center, was still groggy with sleep Friday morning when she heard what sounded to her like a moving truck’s door being slammed shut. A little later, she turned on the television and heard the news of the blast.

Friday’s explosion occurred more than two years after a deadly episode at a training facility for the Sheriff’s Department. In November 2022, 25 recruits at an academy near the city of Whittier were injured while on a run after a driver going the wrong way ran into them. One of the recruits later died from his injuries, and the driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving.

The handling of explosives by police officers and sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles has led to problems in the past.

In June 2021, 17 people were injured when part of a cache of illegal fireworks blew up in South Los Angeles in what was meant to be a controlled detonation by bomb squad technicians. Those technicians worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, not the Sheriff’s Department. Ten of the injured were law enforcement officers.

The explosion also caused extensive damage to more than 20 homes and over a dozen businesses. The Los Angeles Police Department later said personnel had incorrectly estimated the weight of the fireworks, and the city last year agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle claims by residents.

Ana Facio-Krajcer and Qasim Nauman contributed reporting.

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