Attorneys for family members of an 18-year-old man fatally shot by Santa Ana police announced Thursday they had filed a claim with the city, a precursor to a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Victor Lopez of Santa Ana was fatally shot in an encounter with police Jan. 28 in a parking structure at 450 Fourth St. Lopez was killed in front of his fiancee and their 1-year-old son.<\/p>\n
Police said an officer attempted to stop him about 10:30 p.m., but he kept driving and entered the parking structure. Lopez got out of the vehicle, armed with a gun and refused commands to drop it before he was shot, police alleged.<\/p>\n
Attorney Adante Pointer said at a news conference in Costa Mesa Thursday the shooting was \u201cunlawful, unnecessary and frankly an outrageous, callous death of Victor Lopez.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointer said Lopez was attempting to surrender but stumbled and the gun fell out. As he was trying to get down on the ground he was shot three times in the back, Pointer alleged.<\/p>\n
Lopez was \u201ckilled in front of his 1-year-old child who was sitting there mere feet, mere steps away from where his father was gunned down,\u201d Pointer said.<\/p>\n
Attorney Bryan Harrison said the family was \u201crequesting a separate investigation be conducted by the Orange County district attorney\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attorneys who also asked for the body-worn camera footage from the officer and surveillance video from the parking structure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an incident that never should have occurred to an individual who was surrendering,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cNot even in times of war do you shoot someone during a surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez\u2019s sister, Emily Lopez, said her younger brother was \u201cthe most giving and loving person I\u2019ve ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez was \u201cso proud\u201d of his son, Jaden.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was so excited about being a father\u201d Emily Lopez said. \u201cHe was a young man with a baby and a future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointer read a statement from Lopez\u2019s fiancee, Leileen Carrasco.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched Victor get out of the vehicle,\u201dshe said. \u201cI watched him fall and he tried to get up to do what they wanted him to do and then I watched the officers shoot him in the back not once but three times as he was going to the ground… I will hear those gunshots for the rest of my life, and one day I\u2019m going to have to explain to our child why his daddy is no longer here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carrasco said Victor Lopez was \u201cnot perfect, but then no one is. But he was a good father and he loved Jaden more than anything else in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attorneys for Lopez\u2019s family said he was not reaching for his gun, and that he had a constitutional right to own one. They also denied that he was advancing toward the officer or holding the weapon at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attorneys for family members of an 18-year-old man fatally shot by Santa Ana police announced Thursday they had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1052,1431,6314,39128,1790,81143,81145,50933,1555,3817,81141,81144,2327,315,81142],"class_list":["post-169032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-attorney","tag-family","tag-father","tag-fiancee","tag-gun","tag-legal-claim","tag-leileen-carrasco","tag-lopez","tag-man","tag-parking-structure","tag-pointer","tag-police-jan","tag-santa-ana-police-officer","tag-time","tag-victor-lopez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}