The Santa Ana Police Department published a press release on Jan. 29 detailing a fatal officer-involved shooting that was under investigation.<\/p>\n
The press release stated that 18-year-old Victor Lopez was driving and failed to yield to the officer attempting to pull him over, continuing to drive for “several blocks.”<\/p>\n
The vehicle then entered a parking garage and Lopez exited the car and dropped a loaded firearm to the ground, walking toward officers with his hands in the air.<\/p>\n
Lopez then “suddenly turned and walked back toward the firearm, which was on the ground, and lowered his hands,” according to the press release.<\/p>\n
After telling Lopez not to reach for the firearm, an “officer-involved shooting” occurred, according to the press release, with Lopez being struck in the upper torso. Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene. In the vehicle with him was his 19-year-old fiancee and their one-year-old child.<\/p>\n
“Our understanding is different. Our understanding is that he had his hands up and was going to the ground in an act of surrender,” said Adant\u00e9 Pointer, one of the family’s attorneys.<\/p>\n
Following the incident, Lopez’s family announced they would be filing a government claim against the city of Santa Ana, alleging that Lopez’s death was a “reckless, preventable and unnecessary killing,” as said in a press conference held on Feb. 5.<\/p>\n
The family is requesting that the body camera footage, officer’s name and surveillance footage from the parking structure be immediately released. They are also requesting a separate investigation done by the Orange County District Attorney’s office.<\/p>\n
“If the officer wanted to pull over the car, then we all know there’s a responsibility to do so. At the end of the day, the question here is what was happening in those fateful moments when someone’s life was taken,” Pointer said.<\/p>\n
The family is being represented by Lawyers For The People, a firm that specializes in \u201cpolice brutality, civil rights and personal injury cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the press release identifies Lopez as a suspected local gang member, it also states that Lopez was not identified as such until later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Santa Ana Police Department\u2019s Internal Affairs Division, Homicide Unit and investigators from the Orange County District Attorney\u2019s Office are conducting an independent investigation, as is their policy with officer-related shootings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Santa Ana Police Department published a press release on Jan. 29 detailing a fatal officer-involved shooting that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1846,590,609,338,85628],"class_list":["post-180432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-lawsuit","tag-police-department","tag-police-shooting","tag-santa-ana","tag-sapd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180432","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=180432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}