‘Peacemaker’ bishop shot and killed in Los Angeles

Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell was a “man of deep prayer,” an official said.

A long-serving Catholic bishop known as a “peacemaker” was shot and killed in Los Angeles on Saturday, officials said.

Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, who had been a priest and then a bishop during his 45 years with the church, died “unexpectedly,” José H. Gomez, the archbishop of Los Angeles, said in a statement.

He’d been known as a “man of deep prayer,” Gomez said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it responded at about 1 p.m. to the Hacienda Heights neighborhood, where an adult male was pronounced dead at the scene. Los Angeles ABC station KABC confirmed with police that O’Connell had been shot and killed.

“He was a peacemaker with a heart for the poor and the immigrant, and he had a passion for building a community where the sanctity and dignity of every human life was honored and protected,” Gomez said.