The couple’s son was shot in the right lower back, the left lower back, the buttocks and the left arm, he said. Russell French, who lost a kidney, his gallbladder and part of his intestines, was shot on his back right side, and his wife was shot in the lower back, Galipo said. “He did what he did on his own - wrongfully, as the court has found,” Brente told the jury.ĭamages awarded by the jury covered, among other things, wrongful death, pain, suffering, economic loss and severe emotional distress inflicted negligently on Russell and Paola French, who both suffered major internal injuries from their bullet wounds. Police have also said that Sanchez started shooting less than four seconds after French struck him.Ĭory Brente, a lawyer for the city of Los Angeles, sought to cast all the blame on Sanchez, saying he was acting as a private citizen, not a police officer. Police documents made public in 2019 showed that Sanchez was at least 20 feet from the French family when he opened fire.
Sanchez’s lawyers have previously said the officer believed that French had a gun. He said Sanchez was “knocked to the floor” during his encounter with Kenneth French and “thought he’d been shot” when he decided to use his gun. The day of the shooting, Hubert said, Sanchez had worked a morning police shift in Los Angeles before driving home to Riverside and picking up his wife and baby son for a trip to Costco. “Even if he’s off duty, he’s still in the course and scope of his employment,” Hubert told the jury. Sanchez’s lawyer, seeking to limit the former officer’s financial responsibility for the shooting, echoed the argument that the former officer used the gun as part of his job. The city doesn’t want to pay these people a dime.”
That’s really what this comes down to, is money. “Sanchez should be held accountable,” he added, “but so should they. “Make no mistake about it, if Officer Sanchez at the time had not had that weapon by virtue of his LAPD police officer status, this wouldn’t have happened. “They hired him, they trained him, they gave him permission to have that gun,” Galipo told the jury in his closing statement.
That finding effectively made the city of Los Angeles liable for damages.īut jurors were asked to determine whether Sanchez was serving in his capacity as an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department when he drew his gun and fired at the French family, and they found unanimously that he was. Police Commission found that he violated department policy in the shooting of French and his parents, who were seriously wounded.Īfter four hours of deliberations Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Riverside, the jury of six women and two men found that Sanchez acted within the scope of his LAPD employment when he fired 10 shots at the French family.
POLICE SHOOT IN COSTCO CORONA TRIAL
Sanchez, who was fired last year, is awaiting trial on manslaughter and assault charges filed by the California attorney general’s office after a Riverside County grand jury declined to indict him a few months after the killing. The shooting followed a brief confrontation between the two men in line to sample sausages. Bernal found that Officer Salvador Sanchez used excessive and unreasonable force in June 2019 when he shot and killed 32-year-old Kenneth French. A federal jury awarded $17 million in damages on Wednesday to the family of a mentally disabled man who was fatally shot by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer inside a Costco in Corona.
0 kommentar(er)
