A security guard who shot and killed a knife-wielding man who had previously stabbed two customers in the downtown Target Corp. store in 2022 won a round in court when a judge denied Target lawyers access to the plaintiff’s personnel records as a former Los Angeles police officer.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lee S. Arian ruled Wednesday that due to its age the information was likely of little use in the current lawsuit in which Enedino Espinoza’s lawsuit is suing Target Corp., BOP FIGat7th LLC and Universal Protection Service LLC. Espinoza left the LAPD in 1997.
“While it is true that there is no bright-line rule categorically excluding older records, the relevance and reliability of such information diminishes significantly with the passage of time,” Arian wrote.
Espinoza filed the suit in August 2023, alleging he suffered emotional distress from seeing the assailant die. Espinoza also contends that Target and the property owners should not have allowed a mentally ill man to enter the store and have access to knives for sale.
The stabbings occurred Nov. 15, 2022, at the Target store in the FIGat7th shopping center shortly after 6:20 p.m. The victims were Brayden Medina Molina, then 9 years old, and flight attendant Joo Hye Song, then 24. David Franklin, the man who stabbed the plaintiffs, ripped the knife out of a package on a store shelf. The pair settled their own consolidated litigation with Target in 2024.
Espinoza, the security guard contracted to work within the store, ultimately shot Franklin and the series of events from start to finish lasted about four minutes, according to the Target attorneys’ court papers.
In their court papers, Target attorneys contended that Espinoza’s LAPD personnel records could contain medical evaluations, fitness-for-duty assessments and psychological trauma or stress-related conditions, which the lawyers maintained were relevant to evaluating the plaintiff’s alleged injuries and pre-existing health.
Both Espinoza and the LAPD opposed Target’s motion. The judge wrote that information relating to Espinoza’s psychological condition is “more appropriately and reliably obtained through alternative sources.”