Police have taken a suspect into custody after a UPS driver was shot and killed inside his truck in Irvine, California, on Thursday afternoon.

The shooting took place at around 3 p.m. near Chrysler and Bendix in the city, according to Irvine police on Facebook.

Sgt. Karie Davies told FOX 11 LA the UPS driver was on break and eating inside his truck when the suspect, who has not been identified, pulled up in a pickup truck and started shooting. Police believe the shooter was wearing a face mask.

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Officers are working to determine if the driver and the suspect knew each other and if there was a potential motive behind the shooting, Davies said.

“We don’t know exactly what the relationship is between these two gentlemen, if any,” Davies said. “This definitely seemed targeted, meaning it wasn’t a robbery, didn’t appear to be a robbery.”

A few hours later, at around 6 p.m., authorities located the truck of the suspected shooter near Santiago Canyon Road and the Toll Road. The suspect barricaded himself inside his vehicle, but was eventually forced out of it after a chemical agent and a police dog were deployed, Davies said.

“He did not peacefully give up. He was lured out of the vehicle, or forced out of the vehicle by our SWAT team, but he is alive,” Davies said.

The shooter accused of killing a UPS driver on Thursday in Irvine, California, barricaded himself inside his truck before police forced him out and arrested him. (FOX 11 LA livestream/Screenshot)

Community members told FOX 11 the UPS driver was known in the area and typically ate his lunch in the same spot.

“I mean he’s a friendly gentleman, he never really displayed any sort of attitude, any sort of negativity or anything like that. Just kind of like your normal delivery guy,” Kevin Sanchez told the outlet, adding that the slain driver had delivered their packages for years. 

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UPS issued a statement on the driver’s death and said the company will be assisting authorities in any way possible to “understand what happened.”

“Our hearts are heavy tonight with the news of the loss of one of our drivers in Irvine, CA. We are assisting authorities however we can to understand what happened. As a result of the ongoing investigation to find those responsible, we are deferring any additional questions to authorities. The safety and well-being of our employees is our top priority, and we are providing support and counseling services to our employees affected by this tragedy,” UPS said.

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Irvine police said the deadly shooting remains under investigation and urged anyone with information to call 949-724-7200.

“Thank you to the community for your concern as we investigated the tragic homicide that occurred today. Our hearts are with the victim and his loved ones,” the department wrote on Facebook.

A homeless man on parole for an assault conviction dragged a jogger by her hair on a beach near Los Angeles before attempting to rape her earlier this week, police said. 

The alleged incident occurred at around 7:15 a.m. on the Ocean Front Walk in Santa Monica. Witnesses told a 911 dispatcher that a woman, who lives in nearby Venice Beach, was being dragged on the ground by her ponytail.

She was jogging southbound on the beach path when the suspect grabbed her ponytail from behind, knocking her to the ground, authorities said. 

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Responding officers found the woman and the suspect, identified as Malcolm Jimmy Ward, Jr., 48, near some restrooms, the Santa Monica Police Department said. Several witnesses intervened in the attack, police said. 

The woman wasn’t injured. At the time, Ward was on parole for assault with a deadly weapon. 

Investigators believe Ward was trying to sexually assault the woman. He has been charged with kidnapping, assault with intent to commit rape and violating his parole. 

He is being held with no bail.

Kashaan Parks, 39, was arrested Saturday at 10:00 a.m. and charged in connection to the rape of a 45-year-old woman in The Bronx, NYPD said.  (Richard Harbus for Fox News Digital)

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The alleged crime mirrors an incident in New York City where a man was caught on surveillance cameras throwing a looped belt around a woman’s neck before choking her unconscious and dragging her away on a dark Bronx street. 

Police arrested 39-year-old Kashaan Parks over the weekend for allegedly attacking the 45-year-old victim. 

When University of California police arrested Beckner-Carmitchel while he was filming UC police arresting students in a UCLA parking garage, that arrest violated Section 409.7, Sean’s First Amendment right to film police, and his Fourth Amendment right to be free of unlawful arrests. After I fired off a quick email to UCLA police, the school’s comms department, and the UC administration that Sean’s arrest and jailing violated Section 409.7, UCLA released him later that day. So the law worked to free Sean, but he should have never been arrested and jailed in the first place.

They also took away his cellphone, but I told UCLA that using a search warrant to search his phone would be illegal, and they gave it back within a few hours.

At the University of Southern California, the campus police and Los Angeles Police Department violated Section 409.7 earlier this month when they blocked student journalists and faculty from filming the police raid on the encampment and threatened to take away some of the students’ press passes.

However, Section 409.7 worked very well on May 15, 2024, at UC Irvine, where the press office worked closely with the local law enforcement to make sure journalists had access.

Can you explain why Section 409.7 was enacted and what it does? And tell us about any cases you’re aware of where California journalists have invoked it to try to prevent law enforcement from dispersing them from protests. Has it worked, and why or why not?

Reporters pushed for the passage of Section 409.7 after many reporters were arrested, shoved, and shot with munitions by police while covering the Black Lives Matter protests (in 2020).

Before it was passed, California law said that reporters were legally permitted to cross behind police lines during public disasters without being arrested, but it didn’t say anything about public protests where police declared an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to disperse. So some reporters were getting arrested for failure to disperse when they were filming protests and police.

Section 409.7 says that where police “establish a police line, or rolling closure at a demonstration, march, protest, or rally where individuals are engaged in activity” protected by the First Amendment and California Constitution, a “duly authorized representative of any news service, online news service, newspaper, or radio or television station or network may enter the closed areas.” The law says that police cannot arrest reporters for “failure to disperse,” violating a curfew, or filming police.

If a reporter is arrested, the reporter has the right “to contact a supervisory officer immediately for the purpose of challenging the detention, unless circumstances make it impossible to do so.”

Section 409.7 doesn’t prevent police from “enforcing other applicable laws if the person is engaged in activity that is unlawful.”