The Los Angeles Police Department was monitoring Saturday’s deadly shooting at a synagogue in San Diego County and will conduct high visibility patrols around houses of worship in their area, officials said.
“We’re closing monitoring the synagogue shooting in Poway and communicating with our local, state and federal partners,” the Los Angeles Police Department tweeted. “At this time there’s no nexus to Los Angeles, but in an abundance of caution, we will conduct high visibility patrols around synagogues and other houses of worship.”
One person was killed in the shooting at Congregation Chabad and three more were injured.
Authorities warned the public to stay away from the area near the synagogue at 16934 Chabad Way in Poway — a suburb of about 50,000 people north of San Diego — as the investigation was expected to take several hours.
One person had been detained for questioning as of about 12:30 p.m., the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department tweeted.
The injured victims were taken to Palomar Medical Center, where they were said to be in stable condition.
A 19-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the shooting with an assault rifle.
Saturday is the final day of Passover. It’s also the six-month anniversary of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which 11 people were killed.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles released the following statement:
“This tragic attack, on the last day of Passover, is a horrific reminder that the flames of hatred still burn strong among some. An attack, on any house of worship, from churches in Sri Lanka and France to synagogues in Jerusalem or Pittsburgh to mosques in Christchurch, are an assault on human dignity and our rights as people of faith to pray to God. Today’s attack comes close to six months after October’s Pittsburgh synagogue massacre where 11 Jews were gunned down by a neo-Nazi white supremacist. There have been at least three other attacks on synagogues — in Ohio, Georgia, and Montana — that were thwarted by authorities since then.”