The investigation moved from surveillance video and a witness’s roadside encounter to a murder conviction and rejected insanity defense.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Minutes before Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer was fatally shot at a Palmdale traffic light, another motorist had a confrontation with a driver and photographed the car’s license plate. That image would become one piece of an investigation that ended with Kevin Eduardo Cataneo Salazar convicted of the deputy’s murder.
Nearly three years after the Sept. 16, 2023, killing, a Los Angeles County jury found Salazar, 32, guilty of first-degree murder and upheld special-circumstance allegations involving the murder of a peace officer, lying in wait and firing from a vehicle. The jury also found that he personally used and discharged a .22-caliber revolver. A separate phase of the same trial ended Sept. 2 with jurors rejecting Salazar’s insanity defense and finding that he was legally sane when he killed Clinkunbroomer. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 1.
In the first hours after the shooting, investigators did not have Salazar’s name. What they did have was surveillance video from the area around the Palmdale sheriff’s station. The footage showed a dark-colored car behind the deputy’s marked patrol vehicle and then moving alongside it near the intersection of Sierra Highway and Avenue Q. After pausing, the car sped away. Clinkunbroomer’s patrol vehicle shifted forward only a short distance. Officials soon announced that they were searching for a dark gray Toyota Corolla and asked the public to help identify it.
The appeal brought investigators information from a motorist who had encountered an aggressive driver shortly before the deputy was shot. The witness had taken a photograph that captured a license plate. Court testimony later described the encounter as occurring only minutes before authorities believed the shooting took place. Investigators followed the plate information and developed Salazar as a suspect. That lead helped transform a broad search for a vehicle seen on surveillance footage into an investigation focused on a particular home and individual.
Detectives also learned during the investigation that a .22-caliber firearm was registered to someone associated with Salazar’s residence. Authorities obtained warrants, and deputies surrounded the Palmdale home two days after the shooting. Salazar was taken into custody. During the search, detectives recovered a .22-caliber revolver. Prosecutors later alleged that the recovered firearm was the weapon Salazar personally used in the killing, an allegation the jury found true at trial.
Statements Salazar made after his arrest added another layer to the prosecution’s case. At a 2024 preliminary hearing, a sheriff’s homicide detective testified that Salazar acknowledged involvement in the shooting during questioning. The detective also said Salazar expressed remorse. At the same time, evidence about Salazar’s mental condition began to emerge. He told investigators that his problems had begun years earlier and referred to hearing voices, testimony that later became important when his lawyers pursued an insanity defense.
Prosecutors obtained additional evidence through a secretly recorded conversation between Salazar and undercover operatives in jail. During the 2026 trial, prosecutors said Salazar described having wanted to kill a police officer for years. They said he talked about following officers and using music as part of preparing himself. The prosecution relied on those statements not only to establish premeditation during the guilt phase but later to argue that Salazar understood the nature and wrongfulness of what he had done.
The crime itself had unfolded in a remarkably small geographic area. Clinkunbroomer had been working at the Palmdale station and drove away in a marked patrol vehicle while on duty. Prosecutors said Salazar followed him. Less than a block from the station, Clinkunbroomer stopped for a red light. Salazar pulled near the patrol vehicle, shot the deputy and fled, according to prosecutors and the jury’s findings. A passerby subsequently discovered Clinkunbroomer unconscious and summoned help.
Clinkunbroomer was rushed to Antelope Valley Medical Center but died. He was 30. The attack immediately drew attention because it occurred so close to the sheriff’s station and appeared directed at an on-duty deputy sitting in a clearly marked vehicle. Sheriff Robert Luna and other officials publicly appealed for information as investigators searched for the car captured by surveillance cameras. Rewards totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars were announced by public agencies and a deputies’ association during the search.
By the time the case went to trial in August 2026, Salazar’s identity as the shooter was no longer the only contested issue. His attorney, George Rosenstock, argued that Salazar’s severe mental illness was essential to understanding the case. Evidence presented in later proceedings described a schizophrenia diagnosis, psychiatric treatment, auditory hallucinations and delusional beliefs. The defense argued that those symptoms prevented Salazar from properly understanding the moral wrongfulness of the killing.
The prosecution took a different view of the same record. Prosecutors acknowledged evidence of mental illness but argued that Salazar’s actions demonstrated deliberate choices. They emphasized his following of the deputy, the way the attack occurred, his departure from the scene and his statements afterward. During the sanity phase, they urged jurors to separate the existence of psychiatric illness from the much narrower legal question of insanity. The jury ultimately agreed with the prosecution, finding Salazar sane after about a day and a half of deliberations.
The guilt decision had come more quickly. Jurors deliberated for about 2 1/2 hours before convicting Salazar of first-degree murder on Aug. 24. Their findings that he lay in wait, fired from a vehicle and murdered a peace officer reflected the prosecution’s argument that the shooting was not spontaneous. The special-circumstance verdicts also increased the seriousness of the punishment Salazar faces, placing him on course for a life term without the possibility of parole.
Behind the investigative evidence was the career and family life of the deputy who was killed. Clinkunbroomer had served with the Sheriff’s Department for roughly eight years and transferred to the Palmdale station in 2018. He later became a field training officer, working with newer deputies as they learned patrol responsibilities. His father and grandfather had also worked for the department, continuing a family association with the agency that stretched across generations.
Clinkunbroomer was also preparing for a future outside work. Four days before his death, he had become engaged. Friends and colleagues later described his excitement about marriage and said he hoped to have children. He was remembered as a steady deputy who wanted to advance professionally and had considered becoming a detective. Those details became prominent at memorials held after the killing and during later public tributes by the department and Los Angeles County officials.
The case now stands far from the uncertainty of its first night, when detectives had a surveillance image of a car but no publicly identified suspect. The motorist’s plate photograph, video evidence, the firearm recovered after Salazar’s arrest and his later statements became parts of a prosecution that produced both a murder conviction and a sanity verdict. Salazar is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 1 for sentencing, the next confirmed proceeding in the case.
Author note: Last updated September 30, 2026.