Supreme Court asked to shield Sonoma County deputy who killed a 13-year-old carrying a pellet gun

WASHINGTON – It was an October afternoon when 13-year-old Andy Lopez, wearing shorts and a blue sweatshirt, walked down a sidewalk in Santa Rosa loosely carrying at his side a plastic pellet gun that resembled an assault rifle.

Two Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies were driving in the neighborhood. When Officer Erick Gelhaus, an Iraq war veteran, spotted the 5-foot-3 teenager, he thought the boy might be carrying an AK-47.

Their patrol car swung behind Andy. From 60 feet away, Gelhaus jumped out, crouched behind the door and shouted “Drop the gun!”

As Andy began to turn toward him, Gelhaus fired eight shots, killing the boy.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to shield the deputy from being sued by the parents of the boy on the grounds that no law “squarely governs” this situation and would have alerted the officer that shooting the teenager on the sidewalk amounted to the use of “excessive force.”

Joined by several California law enforcement groups, Sonoma County’s lawyers are urging the justices to “support the common sense proposition that officers need not wait for a gun to actually be leveled or pointed at them before responding with deadly force to protect themselves and the public.”

They stand a good chance of prevailing, even though the high court grants only about 1 percent of appeal petitions.

In recent years, the justices have regularly intervened Painters work on a mural for 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot and skilled by Sonoma County Sheriff Deputy Erick Gelhaus on Oct. 22, 2013 in Santa Rosa.

in police shooting cases to overturn rulings that cleared the way for a jury to decide whether an officer used excessive force.

In April, the high court, by a 7-2 vote, tossed out a lawsuit against a Tucson police officer who shot a woman four times as she

stood in her front yard holding a large kitchen knife. The officer, one of three who came on the scene, decided she was threatening another woman who stood six feet away. The other woman later testified they were housemates, and she did not feel threatened.

The justices reversed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had allowed the woman’s suit to proceed. “Use of excessive force is an area of law in which the result depends very much on the facts of each case, and thus police officers are entitled to qualified immunity unless existing precedent squarely governs the specific facts at issue,” the court said in Kisela vs. Hughes.

In dissent, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the decision “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers ... that they can shoot first and think later.”

The shooting of Andy Lopez in 2013 sparked protests in Santa Rosa and an FBI investigation. But no charges were brought against Gelhaus, and the officer returned to duty in two months.