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Barry John Ross

Age : 34

Gender : Male

Race : White

Date : 09/23/2021

Location : West Avenue B and Sierra Highway

City : Lancaster

County : Kern

State : California

Agency : Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during armed mental health crisis

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/23/2021, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies shot and killed 34-year-old Barry John Ross at Sierra Highway and West Avenue B near Lancaster after responding to a report of a man with a gun at Deputy Pierre W. Bain Park. LASD’s later investigative summary provides considerably more detail than the initial news reports.
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At approximately 4:10 p.m., Lancaster Station deputies received a call reporting a man with a gun at Pierre Bain Park in the 45000 block of Fifth Street East. The caller reported that the man was standing beside a white BMW.
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Before patrol deputies arrived, an LASD helicopter located a white BMW leaving the park. Police said the helicopter followed the BMW as Ross allegedly drove erratically, went through red lights and stop signs and eventually pulled into a dirt lot on Avenue B just west of Sierra Highway.
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According to LASD, Ross got out of the BMW holding a handgun. Police alleged that he repeatedly pointed the gun toward the sheriff’s helicopter and also pointed it at himself. That latter detail, omitted from much of the initial coverage, establishes that deputies were confronting an armed man displaying suicidal behavior during a mental health crisis.
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Deputies requested both the LASD Mental Evaluation Team and the Special Enforcement Bureau. Using a public-address system, deputies ordered Ross to put down the gun and lie on the ground. Police alleged that he continued holding the weapon and pointing it toward the helicopter.
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The encounter changed when an uninvolved man emerged from a recreational vehicle parked in the dirt lot and began talking with Ross. LASD said deputies feared Ross might harm the man or take him hostage, so they approached in an armored rescue vehicle.
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Deputies called the civilian toward the armored vehicle and brought him inside. LASD alleged that after the civilian was safely inside, Ross assumed a shooting stance and pointed his handgun directly at a deputy positioned in the turret of the armored vehicle. Deputies then opened fire.
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Ross was struck and fell to the ground. Deputies approached him and provided medical aid before paramedics transported him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. LASD reported recovering a loaded Polymer80 9mm semiautomatic handgun at the scene.
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The later LASD account is materially more precise than the first public reports, which generally described Ross as pointing a gun at the helicopter and approaching deputies. The department’s formal investigative summary specifically states that Ross pointed the weapon at himself, that a Mental Evaluation Team was requested, that deputies used an armored vehicle because of concern for an uninvolved civilian, and that police alleged Ross ultimately took a shooting stance and pointed the weapon directly at the deputy in the turret before deputies fired.
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The names of the deputies who fired remain absent from the publicly accessible LASD shooting materials located for this update. LASD’s own transparency database identifies the case as Lancaster Station file 21-15897-11 and provides the investigative summary, coroner material and video, but does not identify the shooting deputies in the public index.
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No affirmative evidence located for this update establishes that Ross’s family or an eyewitness publicly contested the police account of the shooting or filed an encounter-related wrongful-death or civil-rights lawsuit.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
The deputies who shot Barry Ross have not been publicly identified.
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The institutional background here is unusually important. Lancaster Station was not simply an LASD station with an isolated history of complaints. At the time Ross was killed, policing by LASD in Lancaster and the surrounding Antelope Valley remained under a federal court-enforced settlement arising from a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into unconstitutional policing. The Justice Department alleged a pattern or practice of conduct by LASD deputies in the Antelope Valley that violated constitutional and federal civil-rights protections.
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The federal intervention followed findings involving unreasonable force, discriminatory policing and unlawful stops, searches and seizures affecting Black and Latino residents. The settlement required extensive reforms and independent monitoring of Lancaster and Palmdale station practices. The federal monitoring process was still active when Ross was killed in 2021.
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That oversight did not eliminate continuing concerns about Lancaster Station’s use-of-force review. A later Antelope Valley Monitoring Team report examined twelve use-of-force incidents from the third and fourth quarters of 2021 involving nine deputies, including four Lancaster deputies. The monitors described the findings as greatly concerning and identified deficiencies in management’s critical thinking and thoroughness when reviewing and approving force incidents. In one reviewed case, force initially classified by a watch commander as out of policy was changed by a captain to a training issue and then incorrectly reported as having no issues.
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Ross was also shot during an extraordinary two-day period for Lancaster Station. The night before Ross was killed, Lancaster deputies shot another man, Julio King, after a roughly 90-minute barricade on West Avenue J-12. LASD alleged King pointed a rifle at deputies. King survived. The following afternoon, Lancaster deputies shot Ross. LASD’s own shooting database records the two incidents on consecutive dates, September 22 and September 23, 2021.
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Lancaster Station also had documented history involving deputy cliques or gangs. A January 2021 Los Angeles County report examining LASD deputy gangs specifically discussed the existence of deputy cliques at Lancaster and Palmdale stations and connected such groups with aggressive policing, racial profiling, excessive force, unconstitutional searches and a code of silence used to conceal misconduct.
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There were serious credibility problems within Lancaster Station as well. In 2019, Lancaster Deputy Angel Reinosa falsely reported that a sniper had shot him outside the station, triggering a massive law-enforcement response and search. Investigators determined that Reinosa had fabricated the shooting and his injury; prosecutors subsequently charged him.
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This background does not determine whether the deputies who shot Ross acted unlawfully. It does establish, however, that his death occurred at a station operating under extraordinary outside scrutiny for unconstitutional policing and force, with documented deputy-clique concerns and continuing deficiencies in force review. The individual history of Ross’s shooters cannot be evaluated until their identities are established.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-23/man-shot-killed-by-sheriffs-deputies-in-lancaster
https://abc7.com/lancaster-shooting-deputy-involved-sheriffs-department/11045689/
https://www.foxla.com/news/man-killed-in-deputy-involved-shooting-in-lancaster
https://www.avpress.com/news/man-shot-killed-by-deputies-in-lancaster/article_2a5d8c2e-1c6e-11ec-9e91-0b4d6d5e4a5c.html
https://theavtimes.com/2021/09/27/authorities-id-man-fatally-shot-by-sheriffs-deputies-near-lancaster/
https://homicide.latimes.com/post/barry-john-ross/
https://lasd.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Transparnecy_092321_LAN_DIS_Summary_Ross_Barry_102521.pdf
https://lasd.org/transparency/deputyinvolvedshootingprevious/
https://www.justice.gov/crt/case/united-states-v-county-los-angeles-antelope-valley-cd-cal
https://lasd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AVDOJ_15_Semi-Annual_Report_December_2022.pdf
https://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/CJLP_Report_LASD_Deputy_Gangs_012021.pdf
https://lasd.org/da-files-charges-on-former-deputy/