Deputy Sheriff Jerry Ortiz, 35, was killed on June 24, 2005, in Hawaiian Gardens, California, while conducting a follow-up for a shooting that occurred the previous day. Ortiz, assigned to the gang suppression unit, was speaking with a woman at her apartment door when a man appeared and shot him in the head. He was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center but died of his injuries.

The shooter was identified as 27-year-old Jose Luis Orozco, described as a gang member with prior convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, burglary, and multiple gun and drug offenses. Orozco fled but was captured a few hours later hiding in a bathtub in a nearby apartment and was charged with first-degree murder and faced the death penalty.

Ortiz had served 15 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and left behind a wife and two sons. Does anyone have memories of Ortiz, or information about the case or Hawaiian Gardens gang activity from that period?