A veteran Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has died six months after he was severely burned in a fireplace at one of many division’s cellular capturing ranges, a household spokesperson stated Sunday.
Alfredo “Freddy” Flores, 51, of Sylmar, died Saturday night at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, the place he was being handled for third-degree burns suffered when a tractor-trailer vary the place he was getting re-certified burst into flames final October in Castaic.
Flores, and a second injured deputy serving as vary grasp, had been initially taken to an area hospital in essential however secure situation and despatched to Los Angeles Basic Medical Middle for additional therapy. Flores was transferred to Valley Presbyterian and by no means left the Van Nuys hospital, stated lawyer and household spokesman Joe A. Nunez.
Flores was a 22-year division veteran who labored on the North County Correctional Facility, Altadena Station and, on the time of the accident, Court docket Providers West Bureau. “He was well-respected within the division and locally and his passing will depart an enormous void within the hearts of many who knew him,” the Sheriff’s Division stated in a press release.
The division didn’t present an replace on the situation of the opposite injured deputy.
The blaze began round 9:30 a.m. Oct. 10 within the trailer, which was parked subsequent to the lads’s jail at Pitchess Detention Middle. On the time, Sheriff Robert Luna stated the division would conduct an investigation to seek out out the trigger and “resolve it so we forestall it from occurring once more.”
The Division has relied on greater than a dozen vary trailers so hundreds of deputies can take a look at their expertise 4 occasions a 12 months as required by division coverage. After the hearth, the division shut down all of its cellular firing ranges, launched an inner investigation and referred to as within the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for assist.
It was at the very least the fourth time in lower than a decade {that a} Sheriff’s Division cellular vary caught fireplace.
In 2016, a contractor engaged on a trailer parked on the division’s Ways and Survival Coaching Middle utilizing a steel grinder sparked a blaze. It’s unclear how a lot injury it prompted or if anybody was injured.
In 2019, a cellular trailer being utilized by sheriff’s deputies on the Marina del Rey sheriff’s station throughout a coaching train caught fireplace when a non-explosive gadget used to simulate a stun grenade began a fireplace that engulfed the trailer. All of the deputies escaped harm.
That very same 12 months, a trailer parked close to the Castaic jail complicated caught fireplace. As with the 2016 blaze, officers stated the trigger was a contractor with an influence device. The division didn’t supply extra particulars.
A number of vary specialists advised The Occasions final 12 months that cellular vary fires look like uncommon however there’s a danger of fireplace from unburned gunpowder at any vary that isn’t adequately cleaned and ventilated.
In a press release, Nunez stated Flores’ household was “conscious about the inherent dangers related to the place” however nothing may have ready it for “his premature departure because of accidents sustained stemming from the malfunction of apparatus throughout a coaching drill.”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn launched an identical assertion Sunday, saying that although Flores “put his life on the road on daily basis to guard the communities he served, it’s a horrible tragedy that he misplaced his life from what ought to have been a routine coaching train.”
Nunez stated the household was grateful the division just isn’t utilizing cellular capturing ranges and wouldn’t remark if they’d be submitting a wrongful-death lawsuit. He stated he was serving as a household spokesperson.
Funeral association haven’t but been accomplished, he stated.
Occasions employees author Keri Blakinger contributed to this report.
