Manhattan Beach police detectives are still trying to determine what occurred inside a North Manhattan Beach duplex early Saturday where a SWAT team found a bullet casing, blood and a safe but no suspect or victim.
After days of attempting to track down the resident, police have been “contacted by an attorney who states he represents the tenant of the property in question,” MBPD Sgt. Paul Ford wrote in an email Wednesday morning to Easy Reader News.
They are in the midst of arranging a time, hopefully by the end of this week, to interview the tenant, Ford said.
“At this point, the attorney nor the tenant will be identified, due to the fact that I have not verified any credentials nor have I met with anyone in person,” he added.
Two gunshots heard early Saturday morning from inside the duplex on the 3300 block of Bayview Drive prompted police to deploy its SWAT team for the first time since 2005, Ford said.
The incident began around 3:30 a.m. when MBPD received a call from a resident reporting the gunshots. With assistance from El Segundo, Redondo and Hermosa police, MBPD set up perimeter, cordoned off neighboring streets and evacuated nearby residents.
“We still don’t know if someone is inside the residence,” Sgt. Paul Ford said at the scene. “We don’t know if there’s a suspect or a victim or if it’s a suicide and we won’t know until SWAT units make entry into the location.”
The standoff continued until around 11:30 a.m., when police obtained a warrant to enter the location. When MBPD’s SWAT team finally made its entrance after gassing the residence, nobody was inside, Ford said, nor were any weapons found.
What SWAT officers did find was “a trickle” of blood, a bullet casing and a safe, he said.
Ford declined to indicate if any foul play is suspected.
