Teen Girl Shot By Police Was Seeking New Life, Family Says

LOS ANGELES — She had been in america for lower than a 12 months, however already her principal at a tech-focused constitution college in Los Angeles knew her as a robust pupil in math and physics.

Within the days main as much as Christmas, 14-year-old Valentina Orellana Peralta talked about her life along with her father, who had been planning to go to from Chile for the vacation. She wished to take him to a Lakers recreation to see LeBron James play. She had ordered a skateboard and wished to go again to high school with strikes to point out off.

On their method to a Burlington retailer within the San Fernando Valley on Thursday to buy a Christmas costume, Ms. Orellana Peralta talked to her mom about her greater goals, too — of attending faculty. Above all, the teenager longed to grow to be an American citizen.

Nevertheless it was in america that these goals had been minimize brief, Ms. Orellana Peralta’s mother and father mentioned by means of tears on Tuesday, their voices disintegrating into sobs at a information convention outdoors the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Division.

In what the authorities have described as a horrific mistake, Ms. Orellana Peralta was killed by a police bullet that ricocheted off the ground of the shop in North Hollywood as an officer opened fireplace at Daniel Elena Lopez, 24. Mr. Elena Lopez, surveillance footage confirmed, had been attacking buyers with a motorcycle lock earlier than they arrived.

“That is what my daughter discovered right here: demise,” mentioned Juan Pablo Orellana Larenas, her father, flanked by the household’s attorneys, led by Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who has represented the households of high-profile victims of police killings across the nation, together with George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Soledad Peralta, Ms. Orellana Peralta’s mom, recounted how she had been making an attempt on garments along with her daughter in a dressing room as a commotion began outdoors. They stayed there to cover. Her daughter, she recalled, locked the door to guard them each.

Because the loud noises continued outdoors, they huddled collectively and prayed. Then all of the sudden, Ms. Peralta recalled, they had been each knocked to the bottom in what felt like an explosion. She noticed her daughter’s limp physique on the ground and commenced screaming for assist — a chilling sound that was audible in officers’ physique digital camera movies of the incident. The woman died in her mom’s arms.

When law enforcement officials entered the room, Ms. Peralta mentioned, they pressured her to depart her daughter’s facet.

“She meant the world to me, her household, her mates, her classmates,” she mentioned. “Now our candy angel is gone without end.”

The case has struck a nerve in Los Angeles, the place debates over prison justice reform and police accountability have raged for years, even earlier than tens of hundreds of Angelenos poured into the town’s streets throughout final 12 months’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, spurred by the killing of Mr. Floyd by a police officer who was later convicted of homicide. The anguish has additionally been fueled by a unbroken string of police shootings throughout California.

Relations on the information convention wore indicators round their necks that learn “Justice for Valentina,” and native activists stood by, carrying shirts that learn “Black Lives Matter,” and “Defund the police.” Because the information convention got here to a detailed, some lifted their fists and chanted, “Valentina’s life mattered.”

Many critics of the police have expressed outrage over points of the capturing — the velocity with which an officer opened fireplace on Mr. Elena Lopez though he didn’t have a gun, the truth that law enforcement officials didn’t be certain that the world was away from bystanders.

“You guys don’t have the power to only deal with him to the ground?” mentioned Chloe Cheyenne Rogers, an activist who began the Justice for Valentina petition, which has practically 5,000 signatures. “You’ll be able to’t use any components of your coaching to have the ability to take that individual in a means that doesn’t embody your assault rifle?”

Though the police division has not but confirmed the officer’s identification, activists had been sharing what they believed was his title, and badge quantity, on social media primarily based on the launched physique digital camera footage.

Ms. Rogers, who shared the data on her personal Instagram account, mentioned she did so to make it possible for the officer was “not being protected, or sheltered, by the L.A.P.D.”

Within the footage, launched on Monday as a part of a 35-minute compilation that also included 911 calls and security video of the incident, an officer with a rifle asks his colleagues to decelerate in order that he can lead of their seek for the person who had been attacking patrons.

“Let me take level with the rifle,” he says.

The scenario appears to escalate when the officers encounter a girl with a bloodied face who was essentially the most severely injured, and so they start shouting. “Gradual it down!” one officer calls out, after which: “Maintain up! Maintain up!”

However virtually instantaneously after Mr. Elena Lopez turns into seen round a nook of an aisle, the officer with the rifle opens fireplace above the top of the injured girl, firing what look like three photographs in fast succession with no obvious warning.

The officers had been advised that the attacker could have had a gun. One caller to 911 mentioned as a lot, and mentioned that there had been “photographs” on the retailer, although a retailer worker advised the police dispatcher, appropriately, that the person was attacking folks with a motorcycle lock and didn’t have a knife or gun.

Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the Los Angeles police union, mentioned that there have been quite a lot of 911 callers who reported that Mr. Lopez had a gun.

“After they went into the shop, they believed they had been confronting an energetic shooter,” he mentioned. “Which adjustments the mind-set.” He mentioned officers are educated to reply primarily based on the best degree of potential risk.

However Philip M. Stinson, a professor of prison justice at Bowling Inexperienced State College who research police violence, mentioned that officers should additionally have in mind their environment and the probability of bystanders, even when getting into a probably violent scenario.

“The query goes to come back down as to whether in many individuals’s views, lethal drive was essential to cease the risk,” Professor Stinson mentioned after reviewing the video of Thursday’s capturing.

He famous that Mr. Elena Lopez didn’t look like “inside about 10 ft of anyone when he was shot,” and police had been advised that there have been nonetheless folks within the retailer.

The speedy response from metropolis officers has largely been grief, fairly than requires reform.

Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a brief assertion promising “transparency, sensitivity and accountability.” Different native officers have echoed that however have mentioned they didn’t wish to draw conclusions about whether or not coverage adjustments is likely to be warranted.

However Domingo Garcia, the nationwide president of the League of United Latin American Residents, a Hispanic civil rights group, mentioned in an announcement that the capturing was the newest in a protracted and troubling line of such incidents by members of the Los Angeles Police Division involving Latinos.

“It’s obvious that the times of shoot first, ask questions second, are rearing their ugly head once more in one of many nation’s largest legislation enforcement businesses,” Mr. Garcia mentioned.

Mr. Crump, whose colleagues mentioned that particulars about potential authorized motion in opposition to the police division could be forthcoming, mentioned that the household wished the type of justice that may assist be certain that nobody else turns into “collateral injury” in an encounter with the police.

“We must always not must sacrifice harmless life within the title of security, when it was foreseeable that, two days earlier than Christmas, there have been going to be folks in a purchasing plaza, purchasing,” he mentioned.