A former Long Beach Unified School District school security officer was past the point of minimal danger when he fired two shots at a fleeing car in a shopping center parking lot near Millikan High School in September 2021, killing an 18-year-old woman. in the passenger seat, a prosecutor told a jury at the start of the trial Thursday (April 4).
But the attorney representing Eddie Francisco Gonzalez, 54, of Orange, countered and said three witnesses told police they saw the car turning toward him with screeching tires and thought he risked being seriously injured or even killed.
Jurors will be tasked with deciding whether the shooting of Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez, 18, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, was justified, or whether Gonzalez was already out of danger when he fired.
Rodriguez was the mother of a child who was then 5 months old. The child was not in the car at the time of the shooting.
Gonzalez is charged with second-degree murder for the fatal shooting on September 27, 2021. He wore a gray suit and glasses on the first day of the trial and has been at large since posting $2 million bail in July 2022 .
Gonzalez, driving a marked school safety SUV, stopped along Palo Verde Avenue near Spring Street after seeing Rodriguez and a 15-year-old girl fighting in the street, according to a mall surveillance video. After breaking up the fight, Gonzalez shoved the 15-year-old girl to sit on the sidewalk while Rodriguez, her boyfriend Rafeul Chowdhury and her younger brother all returned to their car, which had been stopped at the entrance to the parking lot . mall lot, according to video shown during opening statements.
Gonzalez walks up to the passenger’s side front quarter panel and slams the car’s hood to make the driver stop, prosecutor Kristopher Gay told jurors. He then points a handgun at the windshield before the driver begins to drive away. After the car passed, Gonzalez fired two shots.
“He fired because three young men disobeyed his orders and tried to flee,” Gay told the panel during his opening statements. “He responded to the disobedience of youth with deadly force.”
The prosecutor said the minimal danger that existed when Gonzalez was near the front of the car passed by the time he raised the handgun and fired.
Gay told jurors that video from the mall and cellphone video from two other people nearby would show Gonzalez lowering the handgun and walking away from the car to first get away from danger and then shoot two shots from behind the car.
Those videos, he said, would match witness statements and ballistics evidence, which will show the trajectory of both bullets came from the rear of the car. One of the bullets passed through the rear passenger window and the headrest of the front passenger seat before striking Rodriguez in the back of the head, he said.
Gonzalez’s attorney, Michael Schwartz, told the jury he would hear from three other witnesses who would testify that they believed Gonzalez was about to be seriously injured or killed after hearing the screeching of tires.
“Less than two seconds,” Schwartz said. “That’s what this case is about. In two seconds, he had to assess whether he was about to be crushed, move away from it, and stop it.
Schwartz told the jury that prosecutors would not have enough evidence to prove that Gonzalez shot with malice and intent to kill that day.
He also said Gonzalez had reason to try to arrest the three people in the car after the 15-year-old girl told him her cellphone was stolen and Rodriguez threatened to kill her family.
Schwartz told the jury that Chowdhury’s younger brother told police the fight was planned and that the three were in the area looking for the 15-year-old.
Chowdhury told police that the three were in the Millikan High School area to pick up Adidas shoes for their then 5-month-old son, which they had purchased through OfferUp, Schwartz said, adding that the evidence would not match this story. .
Rodriguez died a week after the shooting after being taken off life support.
Meanwhile, LBUSD officials ruled the shooting was outside district policy, and Gonzalez was fired about a week after the shooting. Gonzalez was hired by the school district in January 2021, after stints of less than a year each with the Los Alamitos and Sierra Madre police departments.
Long Beach police arrested Gonzalez at his home in Orange a month after the shooting and he remained in custody until July 2022, when he posted $2 million bail about six months after a The judge said there was enough evidence for him to be tried on second-degree charges. murder charge.
The trial is expected to last more than a week.
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