A 14-year-old girl has died in a Los Angeles clothing store dressing room after police opened fire on an assault suspect.
Police also fatally shot the suspect at the Burlington store in the North Hollywood area of the San Fernando Valley, authorities said.
Witnesses told KCBS-TV that a man began acting erratically, threatening to throw items from the upper floor, and attacked a woman with a bicycle lock while the store was crowded with holiday shoppers.
Officers answered a report of an assault and others of shots being fired, police said. Investigators have not found a gun at the scene.
The suspect was shot and died at the store but one of the bullets went through drywall behind the man and killed the girl.
Officers found the teenager dead after seeing a hole in “a solid wall that you can’t see behind,” Los Angeles Police Department assistant chief Dominic Choi said.
Investigators did not immediately know whether she was in the dressing room before the violence began or ran in there to hide, he said.
The names of the girl and the suspect were not immediately released, and the woman who was attacked is not being identified.
Investigators were trying to determine whether the assault was random or targeted. Mr Choi said they do not believe the teenager was related to the person who was attacked.
