July 8 (UPI) — Tyler Honeycutt, who played basketball with UCLA, two NBA teams and overseas, died after barricading himself in a home and exchanging gunfire with Los Angeles police, authorities said.
SWAT officers responded to a call of a “man with a gun” about 5:10 p.m. Friday in Van Nuys, Calif.
Officers were communicating with the person in the house, when he fired a gun from inside the residence, Officer Tony Im, an LAPD spokesman, said in a report by the Los Angeles Times. Then, the officers returned fire and the man barricaded himself inside the home.
Officers believed Honeycutt, 27, was alive for several hours but when SWAT entered the home, they found the man unresponsive,
LAPD posted on Twitter that “it appears as if the suspect was not struck by any officer’s gunfire. The suspect appears to have sustained injuries consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Bort Escoto, who coached Honeycutt for four years at Sylmar High School, told the Los Angeles Times he had been in contact with Honeycutt as well as his mother.
He said Honeycutt was having a hard time adjusting to life in a foreign country as a basketball player in Russia in the Eastern European Professional Basketball League. Honeycutt was supposed to sign a new contract on Saturday with Russia or Israel.
Honeycutt, 27, played for the Bruins from 2009 to 2011, including averaging 12.8 points per game as a sophomore. A second-round pick by the Sacramento Kings in the 2011 NBA draft, he played in 24 games over two seasons and was traded to Houston Rockets in 2013 but didn’t play for the team.
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