In fatal shooting of LAPD officer, Haylee Marie Grisham faces decades in prison
A gang associate faces sentencing Monday for her role in the robbery and killing of an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer who was gunned down while house-hunting with his girlfriend.
Haylee Marie Grisham, 21, pleaded guilty last year to one federal count of violent crime in aid of racketeering for participating in the January 2022 fatal robbery of LAPD Officer Fernando Arroyos. The charge carries a possible sentence of decades in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Three other defendants, all South Los Angeles gang members, were sentenced in July to lengthy prison terms.
On the night of Arroyos’ death, Grisham and her co-defendants were driving around looking for someone to rob when they came upon Arroyos, who was wearing gold chains. Arroyos, who was 27 and grew up in South Los Angeles, was assigned to the LAPD’s Olympic Division.
The shooting occurred about 9:15 p.m. Jan. 10, 2022, in the 8700 block of Beach Street, near Firestone Boulevard, in the unincorporated Firestone-Florence area.
The defendants — Luis Alfredo de la Rosa Rios, Ernesto Cisneros, Jesse Contreras and Grisham — confronted Arroyos, a three-year veteran of the LAPD, who was with his girlfriend as they searched for a home to purchase in the area.
Rios and Cisneros pointed guns at the victims and removed property from both, including a wallet and two silver chains from Arroyos, and gunfire was exchanged.
Arroyos sustained a single gunshot wound, ran from the area and collapsed in an alley as the two gang members left the scene.
Responding Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies found bystanders performing CPR on the fallen officer. The deputies loaded Arroyos into a patrol car and rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, court papers show.
Officers retrieved a loaded handgun from the scene belonging to one of the suspects, and law enforcement received a report of a man suffering from a gunshot wound about a mile-and-a-half from the site of the shooting.
Investigators determined the wounded man was Cisneros, who had sustained the wound during the shootout with Arroyos. Contreras was also found hiding inside a nearby garage.
A second handgun was retrieved from Contreras’ residence.
Rios and Grisham — who were a couple at the time — were tracked down and taken into custody at their home.
Rios, Cisneros and Contreras each pleaded guilty last year in Los Angeles federal court to one count of conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Rios and Cisneros were both sentenced to 50 years in prison, while Contreras received 35 years.
Then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva indicated at the time of the arrests that he directed detectives to take the case to federal prosecutors because of his opposition to District Attorney George Gascón’s decision to no longer pursue sentencing enhancements in gang cases.
Those enhancements can mean the difference between a life term with the possibility of parole in a state murder case and never being released from prison in a federal sentencing.
U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson said after sentencing the three defendants in downtown Los Angeles that when the gang members decided to rob Arroyos, “they literally threw their lives away.”