LOMPOC - The shooting took place at a small rental apartment complex on South I street on the morning of June 4th.
According to the DA's report on the shooting, Lawrence Kitchen grabbed a shotgun and a handgun and started shooting at his neighbor whom he had a long-running feud with and a man she was with sending both to the hospital with gunshot wounds they eventually recovered from.
A dog the woman was holding was killed in the shooting rampage.
Lompoc Police have said when the first officers arrived at the scene they ordered Kitchen to drop his weapons which he refused to do.
In her ruling, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley said Kitchen pointed a gun at the two officers who then opened fire killing Kitchen with two shots.
Dudley ruled Lompoc Police were justified in using deadly force against Kitchen who died where he stood on the sidewalk in front of his home.
"Yes it was very disturbing, very upsetting, it took me a long time to get over it", says I Street neighbor Barbara Arnold about the shooting last June, "I always can see that body laying on the boulevard there, they didn't even put a cover over that man, I mean they shot him and he was dead and he lay there right under the tree for hours."
The two Lompoc Police officers who fired the deadly shots at Lawrence Kitchen have been identified in the DA's report as officers Dan Sessions and Willie Francis both of whom have returned to duty.
Kitchen's neighbors say he had a long-running feud with his next door neighbor about parking and other issues in the small apartment complex and apparently lost all the patience he had left when he grabbed his guns and went on the shooting rampage.
