The police briefly pointed out that the officer involved in the event is William Jones.
The Los Angeles Police, in California (USA), identified the agent who fatally shot during an incident that occurred shortly before Christmas in North Hollywood, and in which two people perished, including the 14-year-old Chilean Valentina Orellana Peralta.
In a statement released Thursday afternoon, the police briefly stated that the officer involved in the incident is William Jones, assigned to the North Hollywood agency.
Jones, without any antecedent for misconduct and now the subject of two internal investigations, as reported by The New York Times, was one of the agents who on December 23 responded to a call in a clothing store in which a man , Daniel Elena López, 24, attacked a woman with a bicycle chain and possibly carried a weapon.
When the agents observed the victim with a bloody head, they shot at the attacker, who fell dejected, like the young Orellana Peralta, victim of a stray bullet that went through the wall of the dressing room where he was hiding with his mother.
As seen in body camera videos released this week by Los Angeles Police, the fitting room at the Burlington Coat Factory store was out of sight of officers and right behind where Elena López was attacking the woman. who has not been identified and should have been taken to a hospital.
Leslie Wilcox, Jones’ attorney currently on administrative leave, said the agent is sorry.
According to The New York Times, the woman was surprised by the public anger directed against her client, “as if the death of Valentina was intentional or reckless on her part, which was neither.”
The identity of the agent is released after pressure exerted by civil groups such as the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable or the Coalition Against Police Abuse, for the Police of this city to know the name of the officer and to file criminal charges.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said in a statement sent to Efe that “the use of lethal force by the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) has been a subject of debate and controversy. for a long time ”.
This week, the minor’s family asked “for justice to be done” and started a fundraising campaign on the GoFundMe internet platform to cover the expenses derived from this fact.
“There is no amount of money that I can bring back to our Valentina, or to comfort her mother, father, older sister, and an entire grieving family, but we want her immediate family to be freed from any financial restrictions she may make. make this grieving process even more difficult ”, the promoters of the campaign indicated on the website.
With a goal of $ 85,000, the initiative has raised almost $ 50,000 as of this Friday.
Juan Pablo Orellana, the father of the minor and who traveled from Santiago (Chile) to Los Angeles, said that the family was devastated by the loss and that they will not rest until justice is achieved.
He added that Valentina, who died in the arms of her mother, considered the United States “the safest country in the world, the country of opportunities.” (I)
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