In their first interview, former officers Alfredo Flores and Eleazar Alejandro, who were each charged with murder, and Nathaniel Villalobos, charged with aggravated assault, talked to us exclusively about that night \u2014 the night they responded to an E tone, or an emergency tone, and found Melissa Perez in what we now know was a mental health crisis in 2023.<\/p>\n
The jury found the men not guilty two days ago, and now Investigative Reporter Yami Virgin sits down with the former officers, discussing the night of the incident, the trial, and their message to Melissa Perez’s family.<\/p>\n
YAMI: Describe the moment right after the shooting happened. What went through your mind?<\/p>\n
FLORES: As for me, it was my first officer-involved shooting in almost 15 years on the department. The first thing that went through my mind was trying to process the shooting itself. Right after that moment, it was just making sure we got inside and tried to preserve life. That was my focus.<\/p>\n
VILLALBOS: As soon as the shots were completed, my initial reaction was to make sure we got inside and just try to preserve life. That was my objective. As soon as we got inside, I mean, I don’t know how to explain it, I rushed in. Everybody was taking their time, putting gloves on, and, I didn’t care about that at that exact moment. I was more worried about making sure that, you know, regardless of what had happened, that we could still preserve her life, because she’s still a person. I mean, that\u2019s what happened for me immediately afterwards. Then a couple minutes passed, everybody started being able to work on her, and that’s when I was able to step away, prepare myself a little bit better, get gloves on, clean my hands, and retrieve more medical equipment. That was my immediate action after the shots, to answer the question.<\/p>\n
ALEJANDRO: For me, it was along the same lines. I remember immediately thinking like, dang, she really made me do this because, I mean, it\u2019s pretty evident police officers don\u2019t go to work wanting to gun down people. You were forced to do that. When we\u2019re faced with a deadly threat, it\u2019s what we have to do to go home.<\/p>\n
The men also say they feel for the family of Melissa Perez. They believe all of this could have been prevented if the department had allowed investigators to do their job and collect the dots before connecting them and charging the officers shortly after the shooting.<\/p>\n
YAMI: What would you want to say today to her family?<\/p>\n
VILLALBOS: From the bottom of my heart, from my family to hers, we\u2019re so sorry for your loss. I pray that they find healing. I pray that they find the strength to keep moving forward and just to love themselves. No matter what has happened throughout this entire ordeal, I extend nothing but my sincerest condolences and love overall to them. They can hate me. They can think whatever they like of me.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow night we will have more of the exclusive interview, where the officers answer whether policy and training were followed that night and what the future holds for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In their first interview, former officers Alfredo Flores and Eleazar Alejandro, who were each charged with murder, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-52158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52158","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=52158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}