BURBANK (CNS) – Attorneys for the parents of a teen girl who was inadvertently shot to death by a Los Angeles police officer in a North Hollywood store are asking a judge to grant a new trial in their negligence suit against the city, but opposing lawyers said in new court papers that the defense verdict should stand.
On May 7, a Burbank Superior Court jury ruled in favor of the city by a 9-3 margin. The 14-year-old girl, Valentina Orellana-Peralta, was killed Dec. 23, 2021, while shopping with her mother for Christmas dresses at the Burlington store at 12121 Victory Blvd. The teen was in a second-floor dressing room when a bullet fired by Officer William Dorsey Jones passed through a wall and struck her.
According to trial testimony, police went into the store in search of a man who assaulted multiple people with a metal bicycle lock. That suspect, 24-year-old Daniel Elena Lopez, was also killed in the shooting. Police said at the time that a bullet Jones fired ricocheted off the floor, passed through a dressing room wall and struck Valentina.
According to the parents’ lawyers, a new trial is warranted because the judge did not allow jurors to hear then-Police Chief Michel Moore’s conclusion after an investigation that no reasonably trained officer in Jones’ position would have believed the use of deadly force was reasonable and abided by LAPD policy.
But in court papers filed Monday with Judge Frank Tavelman, attorneys for the city contend that the issue of Moore’s potential testimony was exhaustively discussed.
“To say that the parties extensively argued and the court considered the issue of the admissibility of Chief Moore’s … findings would be an extreme understatement,” the city’s lawyers stated.
The city offered the plaintiffs’ attorneys two dates in 2024 to depose Moore and never received a response, the city’s lawyers further state in their pleadings.
The family’s attorneys also stated in their court papers that while the jury was never told that Jones’ perception that Lopez had a gun rather than a bicycle lock was reasonable, the instruction given them allowed the panel to excuse the shooting based on whatever Jones said he perceived.
In their court papers, the city’s attorneys defend the instruction.
“Here, the court instructed the jury regarding the elements of negligent use of deadly force by a peace officer … using the pattern jury instruction which states in pertinent part, ‘Officer Jones’s use of deadly force was necessary to defend human life only if a reasonable officer in the same situation would have believed, based on the totality of the circumstances known to or perceived by Officer Jones at the time, that deadly force was necessary,’” the city’s attorneys’ stated in their court papers.
To add the word “reasonably” in front of the word “perceived” as requested by the plaintiffs would have been outside the language of the statute as well as confusing to jurors, according to the city’s lawyers’ pleadings.
The parents’ lawyers further contend that the city was allowed to let a surprise expert witness testify during trial and that the defense made improper statements during closing arguments.
The plaintiffs were Valentina’s father and mother, Juan Pablo Orellana Larenas and Soledad Peralta.
“This motion turns on the only question the jury answered: whether Officer William Jones was negligent when he fired three rifle rounds inside a crowded store, one of which killed 14-year-old Valentina Orellana Peralta,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys state in their new-trial motion.
A hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion for a new trial is scheduled for Aug. 21.
In 2024, the state Attorney General’s Office announced it would not pursue criminal charges against the officer, concluding that the evidence did not show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he acted without the intent to defend himself and others from what he reasonably believed to be imminent death or serious bodily injury.
The AG’s Office did recommend that the LAPD consider making changes to “improve lines of communication in response to ‘immediate action and rapid deployment’ scenarios.”