The parents of a 14 year old girl accidentally shot by a cop at a clothing store in Burlington, police have been charged with ‘failing to help’ when she died in a dressing room.
Valentina Orellana-Peralta was killed in December while officers tried to arrest Daniel Elena-Lopez, who assaulted another woman in the store with a bicycle lock.
Seven months later, her parents filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the city, the store and the cop who shot her, according to files reviewed by Metro.co.uk.
Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr fired three bullets from a rifle at Elena-Lopez, 24. One of the bullets bounced off the floor and through a wall into a dressing room where Orellana-Peralta was trying on dresses with her mother, Soledad Peralta.
Orellana-Peralta fell into her mother’s arms, lawsuit says. Peralta “felt her daughter’s body go limp and watched helplessly as her daughter died while still in her arms,” it says.
According to the coroner, the bullet passed through the girl’s diaphragm, spleen, left lung, aorta and right lung.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, alleges that the LAPD “poorly trained, hired, supervised and detained the police officers who responded to the incident.”
The indictment also states that officers “delayed obtaining medical attention” or “taken necessary life-saving measures” for Orellana-Peralta and her mother. It is alleged that “several officers walked into the locker room without offering assistance.”
“While her daughter was on the floor fighting for her life, Plaintiff Soledad Peralta was ordered to leave the dressing room and wait outside,” the lawsuit continues.
“For what seemed like an eternity, Plaintiff Soledad Peralta waited outside without any information about her daughter’s condition and was not told that her daughter had already died. She also received no medical attention for her own injuries.’
The lawsuit also names Burlington as a defendant for failing to warn customers about Elena-Lopez and properly training their employees to evacuate the store.
Burlington’s staff allowed Mr. Lopez to remain in the store and made no attempt to address his increasingly violent and erratic behavior or to warn shoppers that they may be in danger. .
“Unchecked, Mr. Lopez’s actions continued to escalate and he then attacked a shop visitor with a bicycle lock, seriously injuring him.”
Orellana-Peralta arrived in the US from Chile just six months before her death, relatives told the Los Angeles Times that ‘everything turned out well’ before her tragic death.
“Filing this lawsuit is the first step for Soledad and Juan Pablo in pursuing the transparency and justice promised to them by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti,” said family attorney Rahul Ravipudi.
“It is their deepest hope that those responsible for her death will be held accountable and that changes will be made to LAPD’s policies, practices and standards for the use of deadly force, bringing yet another senseless tragedy.” is prevented by the police.’
The incident is still under internal investigation by the LAPD and an independent investigation by the California Department of Justice.
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