California Deputies Shot in Ambush Are Expected to Recover, Authorities Say

The Los Angeles County deputies were critically injured after being fired upon in their car outside a Metro station in Compton. The gunman remained at large, the authorities said.

Two deputy sheriffs who were shot multiple times as they sat in a parked patrol car in Los Angeles County on Saturday evening are expected to recover from their injuries, the authorities said Sunday.

“God bless them, it looks like they’re going to be able to recover,” Alex Villanueva, the Los Angeles County sheriff, said of the wounded deputies on Sunday, according to The Associated Press. Sheriff Villanueva, who was speaking with religious leaders, added, “They survived the worst,” according to The Associated Press.

The officers, whom the department has not identified, were shot at the M.L.K. Transit Center, a Metro station in Compton, around 7 p.m. local time on Saturday, the authorities said. The Sheriff’s Department said on Twitter that the deputies had been “ambushed.”

The deputies, a man, 24, and a woman, 31, who is the mother of a 6-year-old boy, were taken to a hospital and underwent surgery, department officials said. Sheriff Villanueva said the female deputy was able to summon help by calling in on the police radio despite having been shot.

By Sunday afternoon both were out of surgery and were recovering in the hospital, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department said.

As of Sunday evening the officials have not released much information about the shooting and offered a very general description of the gunman.

The department posted a video to its Twitter feed showing the gunman approaching the passenger side of the car from behind, firing several rounds and then running away. Additional surveillance video shows one deputy exiting the passenger side of the patrol car hand on head, according to The Los Angeles Times. Citing unnamed law enforcement sources, it said one deputy was shot in the head, and the other was shot in the face.

Deputy Juanita Navarro, a spokeswoman for Sheriff’s Department, said the deputies were shot multiple times “in the upper torso” which she said could include the head and face but declined to elaborate.

The gunman, a Black male between 28 and 30 years old, was wearing dark clothing, the Sheriff’s Department said in a news release, offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction. The gunman was last seen in a black four-door sedan heading north on Willowbrook Avenue.

Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a California state assemblyman from South Los Angeles, called the shootings “an unprovoked, cowardly act.”

No suspected motive was given. Sheriff Villanueva, in comments to reporters late Saturday, spoke obliquely about attitudes toward the police.

“This is just a sober reminder that this is a dangerous job and you know actions, words have consequences, and our job does not get any easier because people don’t like law enforcement,” he said.

President Trump, who has been attempting to use scenes of violent protests and attacks on police officers to portray himself as a voice of law and order, retweeted the shooting video early Sunday, saying, “Animals that must be hit hard!”

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic presidential nominee, called for justice after the shooting. “This cold-blooded shooting is unconscionable and the perpetrator must be brought to justice,” he said on Twitter on Sunday morning. “Violence of any kind is wrong; those who commit it should be caught and punished.”

According to the F.B.I., 44 police officers were killed by gunfire while on duty last year, up from a low of 38 in 2015 and down from a peak of 63 in 2011 in the past decade. A study published last year in the journal of Criminology and Public Policy found that line-of-duty deaths of officers declined by 75 percent between 1970 and 2016.

Sheriff Villanueva said he was angered to see two deputies attacked as they were doing their job to protect train passengers.

“Seeing somebody just walk up and just start shooting them, it pisses me off,” he said. “It dismays me at the same time. There’s no prettier way to say it.”

Later in the evening, a few protesters gathered outside the hospital where the deputies were being treated, blocking a driveway leading to the emergency department. The Sheriff’s Department said that at least one of the protesters said he hoped the deputies would die.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested a reporter who was covering the shootings, Josie Huang of the public radio station KPCC and the website LAist. Deputy Morgan Arteaga, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, said Ms. Huang had been arrested on charges of obstructing officers. The department said on Twitter that Ms. Huang had disobeyed orders to stay back as deputies moved in to arrest a protester, had not identified herself as a reporter and had later admitted she had no press credentials.

But on Sunday, Ms. Huang provided her own account of her arrest in tweets and videos that showed her identifying herself as a reporter. She said she had her press identification on a lanyard around her neck, and a television station’s video of Ms. Huang’s arrest shows something hanging from her neck. Another video shows several deputies taking down Ms. Huang.

Asked about Ms. Huang’s statements and videos, a spokeswoman for the department referred to the department’s statement Sunday morning saying, inaccurately, that Ms. Huang had not identified herself as a reporter.

Azi Paybarah, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Austin Ramzy contributed reporting.