Samuel Riveros, 35, a male of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, answered a call just after 7 p.m. on May 31, 2025, to a quiet Baldwin Park neighborhood where residents had reported a man firing a rifle and a person lying unresponsive on the sidewalk near the 4200 block of Filhurst Avenue. When officers arrived, they were met by gunfire. Riveros was struck during the initial exchange, rushed to the hospital, and later pronounced dead. Another officer was wounded in the same ambush, and the man found down at the scene—identified as 43-year-old Darius Wong—also died from his injuries. The suspect was hit in the crossfire, taken into custody at the hospital, and investigators recovered the weapon as the broader investigation began.
In the hours that followed, Baldwin Park officers and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detectives pieced together a sequence that began with neighbors calling in a rifle-wielding man and ended with a gun battle on a residential street. The fallen officer’s partner that night was identified as Anthony Pimental, who survived with injuries, while colleagues and state officials publicly honored Riveros’s service in the days to come.
Prosecutors later named the man they say opened fire. The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged 22-year-old Eduardo Roberto Medina Berumen with two counts of murder, including special-circumstance allegations for multiple murders and the murder of a peace officer, along with two counts of attempted murder of a peace officer and one count of possessing an assault weapon. The charging documents tie the counts to the killings of Samuel Riveros, 35, male, and Darius Wong, and to the shots fired at responding officers on Filhurst Avenue that night.
As the case moved from the street to the courthouse, the portraits of the people involved grew clearer. Records and memorials identified Riveros, 35, male, as a nine-year veteran of the Baldwin Park Police Department who died in the line of duty while responding to the emergency, and described the initial 7:12 p.m. call that drew him to the block where the confrontation unfolded. Those same summaries traced the events from the first 911 calls through the fatal exchange of gunfire.
Authorities have described the killings as a double homicide and say the investigation is ongoing as the murder case proceeds through the courts. The narrative, from the first rifle reports to the final charges, remains anchored to that early-evening alarm on May 31, 2025, when Riveros, 35, male, responded to protect his community and never came home.
