Would-Be Burglar Shot Dead in Bluff Park Was Drunk, Stumbled into Wrong House, Friends Say

Police today investigated into the shooting death of a possible burglar by a homeowner in the Bluff Park area of Long Beach, but the man’s friends say the man was drinking and may have accidentally stumbled into the wrong house.

Officers responded to the 2800 block of East Third Street at 2:24 a.m. Sunday regarding a burglary in progress, said Long Beach Officer Megan Zabel.

The deceased intruder was Ryan Mitchell Anderson, 29, of Long Beach, said Los Angeles County Coroner’s Lt. Larry Dietz.

“The resident shot the suspect,” Zabel said. “Officers arrived along with paramedics who pronounced the burglary suspect deceased at the scene,” she said.

There were no reports of the residents being injured, Zabel said. Police have not said whether Anderson was armed.

But Anderson’s friends told CBS2 News that he lived about four blocks from where he was shot and may have stumbled into the wrong home after celebrating a friend’s birthday.

“I just don’t believe he was a burglar because he’s just not that kind of guy,” Amanda Farhall, a friend of Anderson’s, told CBS2.

Authorities have ordered a toxicology report to determine if Anderson was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or both. Those tests normally take several weeks to come back.

The fatal shooting comes 19 days after an 80-year-old man in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach shot and killed a woman he claimed he said he found inside his home with a man trying to break into his safe. He said they tackled him, and he broke his collar bone in the scuffle.

The man said he acted in self defense as he shot the woman in the back as she ran from his home, killing her, because the pair had burglarized his home twice before. She had implored him not to shoot, saying she was pregnant, but an autopsy showed no sign of pregnancy.

Gus Adams, the man accused of breaking into the home with the woman, has been charged with murder over her death and is scheduled to be arraigned in Long Beach today.

--City News Service

PHOTO Patch file photo.