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The Long Beach Unified School District School Board unanimously voted to fire the security guard who opened fire last month on a moving car filled with young people, killing a female passenger.
The officer, Eddie F. Gonzalez, was fired in a closed-door vote Wednesday.
At a press conference, the superintendent. Jill Baker said officials believe the officer violated the district’s use of force policy, which states that officers must not shoot at a moving vehicle and cannot shoot through the window of a vehicle that “as a last line of defense”.
“We believe the decision to terminate this officer’s employment is justified, justified and, quite frankly, the right thing to do,” she said on Wednesday.
Officials from the Long Beach Police Department said Gonzalez was driving about a block from Millikan High School on September 27 when he saw two youngsters fighting on the sidewalk around 3:15 p.m. and pulled over to intervene.
One of the two, Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez, 18, jumped into the passenger seat of a gray sedan and tried to leave, and the security officer opened fire, police said. A video posted to social media appears to show the officer firing at least two shots at the car as it drives past him.
Rodriguez, the mother of a 5-month-old boy named Isael, died Tuesday after more than a week on life support, his family’s lawyers said in a statement. They said doctors and nurses on her floor at Long Beach Memorial Hospital gave her a ‘hero celebration’ as she was taken to the operating room for organ donation on Tuesday afternoon. .
No evidence emerged that anyone involved in the brawl was armed. Baker declined to comment on this or the number of shots the officer fired.
Police departments across the country have sought to curb incidents of shooting at moving vehicles, which have accounted for 16% of all fatal uses of force by police since 2015.
The Long Beach School District employs nine full-time and two part-time security guards, as well as four supervisors. The incident was the first shooting involving a security guard in the program’s 30-year history, spokesman Chris Eftychiou said.
Gonzalez was hired by the district in January. Baker said he passed the district background checks.
Los Alamitos city spokeswoman Chelsi Wilson confirmed that Gonzalez worked for the city from Jan.8 to April 8, 2019, but declined to provide details of his departure. Gonzalez was also employed by the Sierra Madre Police Department from September 2019 to July 2020, department spokeswoman Laura Aguilar confirmed. She said the city “had chosen to part ways with Officer Gonzalez” but would not provide further information.
Luis Carrillo, one of the lawyers representing the Rodrigueze, appealed to California Atty. General Rob Bonta will open an independent investigation into the shooting. The Long Beach Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office are conducting their own investigation.
In a letter to the attorney general, Carrillo said Rodriguez did not pose an imminent threat to the officer and that the use of force was unwarranted. He suggested that the officer’s actions “met the threshold of criminal charges,” including murder or manslaughter.
Dozens of local residents and activists gathered outside the building where the Education Council held its regular public meeting on Wednesday evening. Many have called for the removal of all school security guards, additional de-escalation training for school staff, and a greater focus on mediation in conflict response.
Cheers mounted when someone announced that the board had voted to fire the officer. But while many applauded the decision, Oscar Rodriguez, 23, one of the dead woman’s brothers, said it was only “a first step” and the officer should go on. jail.
“I hope my sister gets the justice she deserves,” he told the crowd earlier. “It can happen to any other family afterwards.”
He sat on a patch of lawn as he listened through a speaker to the audience’s comments at the board meeting. A rabbi said the security guard could have posed a threat to the neighborhood in general if the bullets had gone astray. A Long Beach resident said that “the fact that a school has someone on campus with a gun is absurd.”
Mona Rodriguez’s cousins described her as someone who was “more of a sister” and would go out of her way to help her friends.
One of them, Luiz Loza, 23, said that the week she was killed Rodriguez planned to move to Kansas, where she also had family, to start a new life with her son. She looked forward to being in a more peaceful environment, he said.
“I don’t think she deserved all of this,” he said. “Her son will grow up without a mother. “
Times staff member Richard Winton contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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