The family of the 14-year-old girl shot and killed by a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer has officially filed a lawsuit against the organization, AP News reports.
Valentina Orellana Peralta was Christmas shopping alongside her mother, Soledad Peralta, at a Burlington located in San Fernando Valley’s North Hollywood neighborhood when an officer fired shots that ultimately pieced their dressing room wall.
Police were responding to a call for a suspect who had allegedly entered the store and attacked two women. Per body camera footage, Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. pushed to the front of the formation line despite other officials pleads for him to “slow down” and “slow it down.”
After spotting the suspect on one side of the aisle near the dressing rooms, Jones fired three shots even though a colleague yelled out for him to “Hold up!” twice.
According to Peralta’s mother, as one of the bullets pierced the dressing room she “felt her daughter’s body go limp and watched helplessly as her daughter died while still in her arms.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit reveals that she was ordered by police to leave the dressing room as she waited for “what seemed like an eternity.” Soledad was never informed of her daughter’s death.
Per Peralta’s father, Juan Pablo Orellana Larenas, and her mother, the LAPD is to blame for the responding officers’ lack of training, which ultimately led to the death of their daughter.
In the court documents they allege that the officials “fostered an environment that allowed and permitted this shooting to occur.”
The suit, which was filed on July 14 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, claims wrongful death and negligence. Additionally, the filing alleges negligent infliction of emotional distress and calls for a jury trial as well as unspecified damages.
Both the LAPD and Officer Jones ,along with the city of Los Angeles and Burlington Stores Inc., have been named as defendants.