Los Angeles County prosecutors concluded that two Los Angeles police officers acted lawfully in the shooting death of a man who was holding his estranged wife at gunpoint in Pacoima more than six years ago, according to a document released Wednesday.
Prosecutors determined that the evidence showed Jose Torres was “prepared to carry out his stated threat” of a month earlier: that he was going to kill his estranged wife and then kill himself and that he refused to comply with officers’ repeated commands to drop his gun before LAPD Officers Nicholas Coronado and William De La Rosa Reyes fired at him on July 18, 2011.
The officers responded with deadly force to save the life of Torres’ estranged wife, whom he had been holding at gunpoint on a sidewalk, according to a 10-page memorandum released by the District Attorney’s Office.
Torres had confronted his spouse outside her home, threatened to shoot one of her cousins when she screamed, and at one point pressed the gun’s muzzle against his estranged wife’s ear after speaking with her for several hours, according to the document.
Officers pulled Torres’ wife to safety after the shooting. Prosecutors found that Coronado and Reyes “acted reasonably and lawfully in defense of others when they used deadly force against Jose Torres,” noting that they will not take any further action in the matter.
–City News Service