Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images
For: The Opinion
Tuesday, October 1
Quinceañera killed by police stray bullet, when trying on dresses for her party
A teenage girl was accidentally shot and killed by the police inside the changing room of a clothing store in Los Angeles, when she was trying on dresses for her party of 15 years, an important celebration in the Latin world.
The adolescent, identified by the coroner on Friday as Valentina Orellana Peralta , was shopping in Burlington in North Hollywood before noon when an officer confronted a man who had assaulted a woman before.
The young woman from 14 years old was injured by the police on Thursday, when they shot a suspect who assaulted a woman.
The man died and the woman suffered moderate to severe injuries.
The shots were fired n around 11: 45 am in a Burlington store , part of a chain formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory, in North Hollywood, the Los Angeles Police Captain told reporters. Angeles, Stacy Spell.
One of the bullets went through a dressing room wall and hit the unidentified girl, according to the deputy director of the Department of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Dominic Choi. Her mother was in the room with her at the time of the shooting.
“You can’t see inside the dressing rooms and it looks like a straight wall of drywall, ”Choi said at a press conference.
She added that the police still do not know if she was in the locker room before if the shooting broke out or if she ran inside to hide.
A source from LAPD said the teen was in the store to try on dresses for the popular Latin American celebration of a girl’s birthday number 21, which marks the transition from childhood to adolescence.
“It is absolutely heartbreaking, and I can’t find the words to try to comfort a mother and family, but I will assure them, the public and our people that we will conduct a full and thorough investigation, ”said LAPD Chief Michel Moore.
Los Angeles Police wrote on Twitter: “One of the officer’s bullets penetrated a wall behind the suspect, beyond that wall there was a dressing room. Officers searched the locker room and found a female victim of 14 years she was hit by gunfire. ”
Moore said it did not appear that the officer who fired the fatal bullet“ knew there was someone behind or I was looking at someone other than the suspect and a wall. ”
But he added that the tragic shooting will be fully investigated.
“There is no police officer in the United States who wants these kinds of circumstances to occur,” he said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state Department of Justice will investigate the shooting under the rules set forth by the Assembly Bill 1506, which went into effect July 1 and requires his office to independently investigate all fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians.
Police said they found a heavy metal padlock near the suspect officers were facing, but no weapon was recovered. The incident was reminiscent of a confrontation on 21 July 2018 in which LAPD cops accidentally shot and killed a woman in a Trader Joe’s market.
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