18-year-old man charged with firing ghost gun at LAPD officers

An 18-year-old man was charged Thursday with attempted murder and other counts for allegedly firing with a so-called “ghost gun” at two LAPD officers in a patrol vehicle.

Anthony Lamont Hill is set to be arraigned June 9 at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse on two counts each of attempted murder of a peace officer in the performance of their duties and assault with a semi-automatic firearm on a peace officer in the performance of their duties, along with one count of carrying an unregistered firearm in public, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Two officers in a marked patrol vehicle tried to contact Hill after they allegedly saw him walking Monday on Washington Boulevard with a weapon, but he allegedly ran from officers, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Hill allegedly turned around and fired a 9mm Polymer80 unregistered handgun at the officers as they drove toward him, with bullet strikes subsequently observed in the officers’ patrol vehicle, prosecutors said.

“My office is holding accountable the people who use guns to harm others and working to restrict access to ghost guns, which have contributed to the recent rise in violent crime across our nation,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a written statement announcing the charges.

In February, the county’s top prosecutor called on three credit card companies to stop online payments for the purchase of kits to make untraceable “ghost guns,” which are typically assembled from purchased or homemade components and lack serial numbers by which they can be identified.

At a press conference last week in the wake of three mass shootings in Orange County, Milwaukee and Buffalo, New York, Gascón said people should not have access to ghost guns and called for implementation of “reasonable gun control.”