Catholic bishop shot dead at LA home

The shooting death of a beloved Catholic bishop hailed as a ‘peacemaker’ in the LA area is being treated as a homicide, police in the City of Angels have revealed.

Announced in a statement from LA County police on Sunday, the murder probe comes roughly 24 hours after the high-ranking bishop, 69-year-old David O’Connell, was gunned down inside his home by an unknown assailant.

Cops said they responded to O’Connell’s four-bedroom, three-bathroom Hacienda Heights home at around 1pm Saturday, and found the clergyman with a gunshot wound to his upper torso.

The victim – who has served as the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles since 2015 – was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect is still at large.

Providing an update into the progress of the ongoing investigation on Sunday, cops revealed the case is now being handled as a murder – a day after investigators had deemed the death of the Irish-born church official ‘suspicious’.