SCHIZOPHRENIC'S DEATH INVESTIGATED OFFICER SHOT MAN AFTER HE STABBED PARTNER WITH TOOL.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA

Staff Writer

An LAPD officer who shot a schizophrenic man to death in Highland Park after the man attacked his partner with a screwdriver is being placed on administrative duties pending a standard 72-hour investigation, police said Monday.

Officer Ivan McMillan was defending the life of his partner when he shot Francis Mondragon, 24, three times at a residential home for the mentally ill, police said.

A four-year veteran of the force, McMillan, 29, and his partner responded to a patient who was attacking residents at the home around 2 a.m. Sunday.

When they arrived at Fair Oaks Manor, Mondragon was standing on the porch holding a screwdriver. After McMillan and his partner tried to persuade him to drop the weapon, Mondragon ran into the 15-person facility, and they chased him.

Mondragon turned and stabbed McMillan's partner -- whom police declined to identify -- several times. But his bulletproof vest protected him. McMillan then shot Mondragon three times.

Mark Cruz, Fair Oaks Manor director, asked staff members not to speak publicly about the incident pending an investigation, but he said Mondragon had recently been upset.

"He's a good kid," Cruz said. " ... He had wanted to go back to college and start school."

After dealing with years of criticism about how it handled the mentally ill, the LAPD in 2005 implemented a requirement that all officers take a two-hour Internet training course.

The department also has a 40-officer unit specifically trained to respond to incidents involving mentally ill patients to try to calm a possibly violent situation. That unit was not called in Sunday's shooting.

Police say when McMillan and his partner arrived, it's unclear whether they knew Mondragon was mentally ill. Cruz said it's standard staff procedure to inform any police or medical responders of patients' conditions.

Lt. Rick Wall, head of the crisis response support unit, said he was unfamiliar with details of the case. But he said the communication system that prioritizes emergency calls can sometimes initially kick out key information, such as the mental status of a patient.

"It's too early to say whether they should have been called," said Andre Birotte, the LAPD inspector general. "It's a difficult issue. What it comes down to (is): Is there adequate time to employ the resources of a mental-evaluation unit?"

A 2004 inspector general report found that dispatch codes sometimes failed to indicate the mental status of suspects.

"This raises questions as to why specially trained officers weren't responding to that call," said Peter Bibring, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney who monitors the LAPD.

"... They might not have helped the situation, but they are certainly not going to help the situation if they are not deployed."

Wall said sometimes violent situations cannot be avoided.

"There are those occasions that despite the amount of training and experience that the officer has in dealing with the mentally ill, there will be use-of-force incidents," he said. "And there will be those situations that the patient will be so out of control and is armed that there will be a deadly force situation."

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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