Attorneys representing the city of Los Angeles in the upcoming trial of a lawsuit brought by the parents of a girl accidentally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in a North Hollywood clothing and home accessories store in 2021 want a judge to allow the defense to refer to initial police beliefs about a possible “mass casualty” event taking place.
“References to an active shooter and/or mass casualty event are directly relevant and not unduly prejudicial,” lawyers for the city and Officer William Dorsey Jones state in court papers filed Friday with Burbank Superior Court Judge Frank M. Tavelman.
The teen, Valentina Orellana-Peralta, was killed Dec. 23, 2021, while shopping with her mother — trying on Christmas dresses — at the Burlington store at 12121 Victory Blvd. The girl was in a second-floor dressing room when a bullet fired by Jones passed through a wall and struck her.
Police had gone into the store in search of a suspect who assaulted multiple people with a metal bicycle lock. That suspect, 24-year-old Daniel Elena Lopez, was also killed. Police said at the time that a bullet fired at the suspect ricocheted off the floor then passed through a far wall, entering the dressing room where it struck Valentina.
During a pretrial deposition, Jones made literally over a dozen references to decedent Lopez as being an “active shooter” and as many references to the subject incident at the Burlington store as a “mass casualty” event, descriptions the parents’ lawyers maintain are incorrect and prejudicial and should not be used before a jury.
“Common sense dictates that the terms `active shooter’ and `mass casualty’ are incredibly inflammatory terms on their face,” the couple’s attorneys argue in their pleadings while noting that in his deposition Jones also referred to the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado and the 1997 North Hollywood shootout at the Bank of America.
But in their pleadings, defense attorneys note, among other examples, that one of the 911 calls involved a Burlington employee who used the term “active shooter” to describe shots she believed she had heard inside the store.
“To the contrary, the totality of the evidence surrounding criminal decedent Elena Lopez’s bizarre, hostile, aggressive, deadly and uncontrollable actions explains why there was so much fear and reports of his deadly and bizarre actions,” including reports of his being armed with a deadly weapon, the defense lawyers argue in their court papers.
By excluding such evidence, the plaintiffs’ attorneys are “attempting to prevent defendant Jones and the city from adequately defending themselves by asking this court to sanitize a very dynamic and ever-changing deadly incident, which placed several patrons in harm’s way…,” the defense attorneys contend in their filing.
Trial of the lawsuit is scheduled April 8.