Ryan Clinkunbroomer had become engaged four days before his death and was building a career training younger sheriff’s deputies.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Ryan Clinkunbroomer had spent about eight years in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, had begun training newer deputies and had become engaged only four days earlier when his life ended at a Palmdale traffic signal. Three years later, the man who killed him is approaching sentencing.
Kevin Eduardo Cataneo Salazar, 32, is scheduled to return to Los Angeles County Superior Court on Oct. 1 after jurors resolved both parts of his criminal case. The panel convicted him Aug. 24 of first-degree murder and found true special circumstances tied to the killing of a peace officer, lying in wait and firing from a vehicle. On Sept. 2, following a separate proceeding required by Salazar’s insanity plea, the jury determined that he had been legally sane when he killed Clinkunbroomer. Salazar faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The court decisions bring the case to its punishment phase, but the public story surrounding Clinkunbroomer has long extended beyond the prosecution. He came from a family closely tied to the Sheriff’s Department. His father and grandfather had served in the agency, and Clinkunbroomer followed the same professional path. He transferred to the Palmdale station in 2018 and eventually became a field training officer, a position that placed him alongside deputies learning how to handle patrol duties in the Antelope Valley.
Colleagues remembered him as calm, capable and committed to his work. He had aspirations beyond his current assignment and talked about becoming a detective. At the same time, his life outside the department was changing. On Sept. 12, 2023, Clinkunbroomer became engaged. Family members publicly celebrated the news. By Sept. 16, he was dead, leaving relatives and co-workers to describe not only the career he had built but also the marriage and family life he had expected to begin.
The shooting occurred shortly after Clinkunbroomer left the Palmdale station on duty in a marked patrol vehicle. Prosecutors said Salazar followed him. The deputy stopped at a red light near Sierra Highway and Avenue Q, less than a block from the station. A dark-colored car approached the patrol unit, moved alongside it and paused. Salazar shot Clinkunbroomer and drove away, according to prosecutors and the jury’s later findings. The deputy remained inside the patrol vehicle until a passerby discovered him and sought help.
Emergency crews took Clinkunbroomer to Antelope Valley Medical Center, where he died. The attack stunned the station because it had occurred almost within sight of the deputy’s workplace. Sheriff’s officials launched an intensive search and released information about a dark gray Toyota Corolla captured on surveillance footage. Public agencies and law enforcement groups announced substantial rewards as investigators reviewed video, interviewed witnesses and asked people in the area to check cameras and provide information.
The investigation turned quickly. A motorist told authorities about an encounter with an aggressive driver shortly before the deputy was shot. The motorist had photographed a license plate, giving detectives a new lead. Authorities connected the information to Salazar and learned that a .22-caliber firearm was linked to someone at his residence. Deputies arrested him at his Palmdale home two days after Clinkunbroomer’s death and recovered a .22-caliber revolver during the search.
As the criminal case developed, prosecutors gathered evidence that went beyond the vehicle and firearm. At a preliminary hearing, a sheriff’s homicide detective testified that Salazar acknowledged his role during questioning after his arrest. Prosecutors later relied on a secretly recorded jail conversation in which Salazar allegedly spoke about having wanted to kill a police officer for years and described following officers as he prepared himself. Those statements became central to the prosecution’s argument that the killing was planned.
When the case finally reached a jury in August 2026, prosecutors argued that Clinkunbroomer had been targeted because he was a law enforcement officer. Salazar’s defense did not treat the case solely as a dispute over the identity of the shooter. His attorney drew jurors’ attention to Salazar’s mental-health history and argued that his thinking had been profoundly affected by schizophrenia, hallucinations and delusions. The defense position set the stage for an unusual two-stage trial.
The first stage required the jury to decide guilt under the ordinary criminal charges. After about 2 1/2 hours of deliberations, jurors convicted Salazar of first-degree murder. They also found true allegations that he lay in wait, fired from a vehicle, murdered a peace officer and personally used and discharged a .22-caliber revolver. The findings established criminal liability but did not yet resolve where Salazar would ultimately be confined because his not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea remained to be decided.
The sanity phase then focused directly on the relationship between Salazar’s psychiatric condition and the legal definition of insanity. His attorney cited his schizophrenia diagnosis and evidence of auditory hallucinations and delusional beliefs. Mental-health professionals called by the defense concluded that Salazar had been legally insane at the time of the shooting. The defense argued that his illness affected his ability to understand the moral wrongfulness of what he had done.
Prosecutors urged jurors to look at his conduct as evidence of awareness and intent. They returned to the way Salazar followed Clinkunbroomer, approached the marked patrol vehicle, fled after the shooting and spoke about the crime afterward. They argued that mental illness and legal insanity were not interchangeable concepts and that Salazar’s behavior showed he knew what he was doing. After about a day and a half of deliberations, jurors agreed and found him legally sane Sept. 2.
For the Sheriff’s Department, the verdicts arrived after years of memorials and public remembrances. In 2023, officers and residents gathered outside the Palmdale station as flowers and candles accumulated. A law enforcement procession accompanied Clinkunbroomer’s body on its journey from the Antelope Valley. At his funeral, relatives and colleagues spoke about him as a son, brother, fiancé, friend and deputy rather than only as the victim in a criminal case.
His work as a training officer became an important part of those remembrances. The position carried responsibility for guiding deputies through real-world patrol work, evaluating their performance and helping them develop judgment in the field. Clinkunbroomer had held that role for roughly a year and a half. Sheriff’s officials described the assignment as one generally entrusted to respected, experienced personnel. His death therefore affected not only relatives and friends but deputies who had worked with him and those he helped train.
The Oct. 1 sentencing will return attention to the courtroom and to the legal consequences of Salazar’s actions. The jury has already resolved the factual and mental-state disputes presented at trial: it found that he committed first-degree murder under the charged special circumstances and that he was legally sane when he did so. The hearing comes just over three years after Clinkunbroomer’s death and one day after the latest anniversary month of a killing that began as an unexplained roadside ambush near the deputy’s own station.
Author note: Last updated September 30, 2026.