A Los Angeles Police Department detention officer died of COVID-19 complications Friday night, becoming the agency’s first coronavirus fatality.
The officer was identified as Senior Detention Officer Erica McAdoo.
“She lost her valiant battle with coronavirus late yesterday,” the department said in announcing McAdoo’s death Saturday. “She is survived by her loving family.”
Authorities did not provide information on McAdoo’s age or which detention center she worked in.
As of Thursday, at least 287 LAPD employees had tested positive for the virus, Officer Tony Im told KTLA.
Coronavirus infections among L.A. police officers spiked in June, and LAPD Chief Michel Moore had attributed the increase partly to the “challenging conditions officers faced” on the skirmish lines during the massive protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In May, there was a coronavirus outbreak at an LAPD training center, leaving 17 police and detention officer trainees infected with the coronavirus. Another three have since tested positive, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
Detention facilities have been among the hardest hit amid the pandemic, along with other settings where people live and work clustered close together.
In her most recent update Wednesday, L.A. County Health Director Barbara Ferrer said there were 1,309 coronavirus cases in jail facilities across the county—1,005 among inmates and 304 among staff.
State prisons have reported 184 coronavirus cases, federal prisons recorded 761 cases and there has been 65 known infections in juvenile facilities.
The Men’s Central Jail, run by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, has had 93 staff members and 478 inmates test positive for the virus. Another two people at the facility have died of the respiratory illness.
McAdoo is among at least four law enforcement officers known to have died of the virus in the region.
Two Riverside County Sheriff’s Department deputies died of COVID-19 complications back in April. One of them, 54-year-old Deputy Terrell Young, is believed to have contracted the coronavirus from an inmate he had escorted to a hospital, authorities said.
A correctional officer at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco and a plant operations employee at Ironwood State Prison in eastern Riverside County both died of the virus in early June.