LOS ANGELES (AP) — A jury Thursday found the city of Los Angeles was not liable in the killing of a 14-year-old girl who was hit by a police officer’s stray bullet during a shootout while Christmas shopping in 2021 with her mother.
The ruling came after a nearly monthlong trial in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the LA Police Department by the parents of Valentina Orellana-Peralta. She was at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood neighborhood on Dec. 23, 2021, when she was struck by a bullet that had gone through the dressing room wall.
The jury sided with the city 9-3 after deliberating for just over a day.
The family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, in a video statement called it “the most devastating loss of my career” and said he doesn’t understand the jury’s decision.
Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said the city shares the family’s grief but the jury made the correct decision and that the city stands by the officer who will carry the “burden of Valentina’s death with him for many years.”
Police responded to calls for help after a man wielding a bike lock attacked two women in the building. Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. was part of a group of armed officers that walked through 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 the city not negligent on all accounts.
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 stood in front of an exterior brick wall, when the area actually contained the women’s dressing rooms. One of the bullets he fired ricocheted off the ground behind the man and went through the wall, hitting Orellana-Peralta.
The Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, ruled in 2022 that Jones was justified in firing once but that his two subsequent shots were out of policy. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore found in his own review that all three shots were unjustified.
A report 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 file criminal charges.