los angeles — A jury on Thursday found the city of Los Angeles not liable in the death of a 14-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet from a police officer during a shootout while Christmas shopping in 2021 with her mother.
The ruling came after A Trial for about a month In the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the Los Angeles Police Department by my father Valentina Orellana Peralta. She was at a store in Burlington in the North Hollywood neighborhood on Dec. 23, 2021, when she was struck by a bullet that went through a 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 professional life” and said he did not understand the jury’s decision.
Los Angeles City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto said the city shares the family’s grief but that the jury made the right decision, and that the city stands with the officer who will carry “the burden of Valentina’s death with him for many years.”
police He responded to calls Calling for help after a man carrying a bicycle lock attacked two women in the building. Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. was part of a group of armed officers who walked into the store. He fired his gun three times, killing the man and Orellana Peralta.
The lawsuit filed by the girl’s parents alleged wrongful death, negligence and infliction of emotional distress. The jury found that the city was not negligent by any measure.
Jones told the LAPD’s Use of Force Review Board that he mistook the bike lock the man was carrying for a gun. He said he believed 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 off the ground behind the man, went through the wall, and struck Oriana Peralta.
The Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, ruled in 2022 that Jones was justified in shooting once but that the two subsequent shots were justified. They were out of politics. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore found in his own review that all three shots were unprovoked.
An April 2024 report by the California Attorney General’s Office found that Jones acted with the intent to defend himself “from what he reasonably believed was imminent death or serious bodily injury” and decided not to press criminal charges.