LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police have shot and killed three people and an officer has been stabbed in a series of Southern California confrontations.

The violence began before dawn Thursday when Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies shot a man they say approached them with a 3-foot-long spiked garden claw in Bellflower.

Another man armed with a gun was killed at around 4 a.m. in Anaheim after a five-hour standoff and a 47-year-old woman died Thursday afternoon after she stabbed a San Diego police dog handler in the chest.

The officer was one of several called to help sheriff's deputies serve civil paperwork.

The wounded officer was treated at a hospital and released.