Authorities on Sunday released the name of a Los Angeles Police Department officer who was killed Saturday in an off-duty crash in Torrance.
Twenty-four-year-old Erick Alcaraz was riding his own private motorcycle, a 2014 Yamaha R6, when it collided with a 2013 Kia Optima at an intersection, the LAPD said in a statement.
The officer, who sustained major injuries, was tended to by Fire Department personnel but succumbed to his injuries, Torrance police said. The Optima’s only occupant, a 53-year-old woman, was treated for minor injuries.
Alcaraz had been with the LAPD for 18 months and finished his one-year probationary period at the department’s Southwest Patrol Division on the day of the crash, according to a friend.
A Marine Corps veteran, he had been scheduled to join the West Los Angeles Division on Sunday, the LAPD statement said.
The collision occurred shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday at South Western Avenue and West 234th Street (map), near the border of Torrance and the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles, said Lt. Mike Jezelin of the Torrance Police Department. There is no traffic signal at the intersection.
The officer was traveling south on Western at the time of the crash, while the other vehicle was traveling eastbound a making a left turn from 234th onto Western, said Torrance police Lt. Brian O’Steen.
The incident is under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call the Torrance Police Department’s Traffic Division at 310-618-5557.
“The entire #LAPD grieves the loss of a young officer taken from us too soon,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Sunday on Twitter. “#Godspeed brother.”
Alcaraz was the sixth LAPD officer to die in a traffic collision in 2014.
KTLA’s Ashley Soley-Cerro, Brianna Ruffalo and Crystal Garcia contributed to this report.