"The only thing I want is justice for my daughter."
Thus Juan Pablo Orellana, father of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, the girl killed by mistake last December 23 by a stray bullet fired by the police in Los Angeles. "I will have no rest until all these criminals are in prison, each of them," he said in Spanish.
The 14-year-old Chilean was trying on clothes in the dressing room when she was fatally wounded at the Burlington department store in North Hollywood, where she had gone with her mother. "We were both in a dressing room, buying clothes for Christmas. We heard screams, we sat and hugged, praying, when something hit Valentina - said her mother Soledad Peralta -. She died in my arms. I couldn't help it. nothing, "she sobbed.
Valentina's parents were joined yesterday by their lawyers, including Ben Crump, who specializes in deaths involving police officers and who has especially defended the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore apologized to his family and pledged to shed light "on the circumstances that led to this tragedy."
THE RECONSTRUCTION - That day the LAPD intervened in the department store for a man who had assaulted several women, injuring one of them with a heavy bicycle lock. Upon their arrival, the policemen saw a bloody woman on the shelves of the store a few meters from the suspect. At that point one of the officers opened fire on the man three times with a rifle, fatally wounding him.
Valentina and her mother were in a dressing room on the other side of a wall, just behind the suspect, and it was at that moment that the young woman was hit by a bullet: the bullet, from a first reconstruction, ricocheted on the floor and crossed the cabin wall.
(Unioneonline / D)