Washington, February 19. Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell was shot and killed Saturday and police consider what happened to be a homicide, the city’s archdiocese said Sunday.
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this news,” Archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gómez said in the note.
The city police department received an emergency call around 1:00 p.m. local time Saturday. When officers arrived they found O’Connell’s body with no signs of life and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
He was in a room in a house and had a gunshot wound to his chest that was still bleeding.
At first his death was investigated as “suspicious”, but later it was determined to be a homicide, according to the archdiocese.
“His legacy will live on,” the Los Angeles Police Department said on Twitter on Sunday.
O’Connell was born in Ireland in 1953 and was named Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles by Pope Francis in 2015. He had served in that archdiocese since 1979 and was the chairman of an interdiocesan task force there to coordinate the helping children and families in Central America.