Jury finds city of LA not liable in death of 14-year-old girl hit by police officer’s stray bullet
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A jury found Thursday that the city of Los Angeles is not responsible for the killing of a 14-year-old girl who was struck by a police officer’s stray bullet during a confrontation with her mother while she was Christmas shopping in 2021.
The decision came after a while almost a month long trial in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by his parents against the L.A. Police Department. Valentina Orellana-Peralta. He was shot on Dec. 23, 2021, at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood neighborhood, with a bullet that penetrated a dressing room wall.
The jury sided with City 9-3 after deliberating for just over a day.
The family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, called it “the most devastating loss of my career” in a video statement and said he did not understand the jury’s verdict.
Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said the city sympathized with the family but said the jury made the right decision and the city stood by the officer who “will bear the burden of Valentina’s death for many years to come.”
Police responded to calls A man using a bike lock called for help after attacking two women in the building. Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. was part of a group of armed officers roaming the store. He fired his rifle three times, killing the man and Orellana-Peralta.
The lawsuit filed by the girl’s parents alleged wrongful death, negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The jury found that the city was not negligent in every respect.
Jones told the LAPD’s Use of Force Review Board that he mistook the bike lock the man was holding for a gun. He said he thought the man was standing in front of an exterior brick wall when the area actually contained women’s locker rooms. One of the bullets he fired ricocheted behind the man, penetrated the wall and hit Orellana-Peralta.
The Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, ruled in 2022 that Jones was justified in firing once, but so were his next two shots. was out of politics. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore found in his own review that all three shootings were unjustified.
A report prepared by the California Attorney General’s Office in April 2024 found that Jones acted with the intent to defend himself “from what he reasonably believed to be imminent death or serious bodily injury” and decided not to press charges.
