100 at Police Station Protest Killing of Man : LAPD: The demonstrators gather at the Foothill station in Pacoima two days after an officer shot a gang member. At another site, firefighters are attacked.

More than 100 people demonstrated outside the Los Angeles Police Department station in Pacoima on Wednesday to protest the fatal shooting of a Pacoima gang member by a police officer he allegedly attacked with a broomstick.

Violence later broke out nearby. No injuries or arrests were reported and police were not certain the events were related.

Several hours after the demonstration to protest the killing Monday of Efrain Lopez, 18, Los Angeles firefighters were pelted with rocks and bottles when they tried to put out a fire in a garbage container at Maclay Junior High School in Pacoima, said Bob Collis, a Fire Department spokesman.

The school, in the 12000 block of Pierce Street, is about two miles from the police station.

Police Sgt. Sol Polen said it was possible that the fires and the assaults on firefighters, beginning before 8 p.m., were related to the earlier protest at the police station. However, he said, police could not be sure because none of the rock throwers had been apprehended.

A police car was assigned to escort firefighters to the school, where they extinguished the fires.

Demonstrators began gathering about 4:30 p.m. in front of the Foothill Division station at 12760 Osborne St., expressing outrage.

“We want justice for whoever did this to him,” said Dora De La Mora, 21, a cousin of Lopez.

“They did not have to shoot him nine times. A broomstick is not going to kill two police officers who have been trained to fight. . .. We feel like they treated him like an animal.”

Prior to the shooting, the 18-year-old Lopez assaulted his mother and a neighbor, investigators said. His mother, who has since protested the killing, had summoned officers to control Lopez, who she said at the time was “acting crazy,” drinking holy water and claiming to be Christ and Satan.

Officers approached Lopez in front of the family home on Borden Avenue and repeatedly ordered him to drop the broom, police said. Officer Neil Goldberg shot Lopez nine times as he charged Goldberg, swinging the broom by the bristle end and yelling “Shoot me! Kill me!” police said.

Most of the protesters said police used excessive force in killing Lopez.

“Instead of fatally wounding him they could have physically restrained him,” said Laura Godoy, secretary of the Cal State Northridge chapter of MEChA, a Chicano student group. “If the officer was going to shoot at him, at least he could have shot him in the leg,” she said. “Why did he shoot to kill?”

Members of MEChA were joined by others from the National Chicano Human Rights Committee and representatives from the Nation of Islam and from Grupo Cuauhtemoc, whose members describe themselves as representing “indigenous people of the United States.”

But others who turned out to watch the protest said they believed police used reasonable force in shooting Lopez.

“The officers had to protect themselves. . .. They were just doing their job,” said Frank Olvera, a Pacoima resident. “It was self defense.”