Family tragedy:
Girl shot by police while in stolen car was pregnant
Sixteenyear-old Antioch girl who was killed by police in Fremont was pregnant.
When 16-year-old Elena “Ebbie” Mondragon left her Antioch home Monday, her mother expected her to return within hours because she didn’t have any makeup on, was wearing sweatpants and left her cell phone behind — unusual for a girl who loved to joke around and was into fashion and cosmetics.
On Thursday, Michelle Mondragon was reeling from a double dose of tragic news: Not only was her daughter shot to death on Tuesday by Fremont detectives while riding in a stolen car in Hayward, but also an autopsy showed she was within the first trimester of a pregnancy.
While the mother was too distraught to speak, relatives described Elena’s death at the hands of police as an unfathomable blow for the entire family.
“She was our baby. This family will never be complete, it’s broken,” Elena’s aunt, Christina Flores, told The Chronicle while sobbing outside her Pittsburg home. “She enjoyed being a kid. (She was) always smiling.”
When Elena didn’t come home Monday, her family started to worry. Later that night,
she called from an unknown number and seemed to be in distress.
“She was crying, ‘Come get me, come get me,’ then the phone hung up,” Flores said.
When her mother tried to call back, the phone was answered by a man the family believes Elena met when she left her home Monday to get food, a boyfriend they only knew as “Rico” and suspect was driving the stolen car when the girl was shot dead.
“I feel like he was manipulating her. She wasn’t involved in what (police) were looking for him for,” Flores said of Rico. “Maybe she hung around them, but she didn’t do none of those things.”
The shooting unfolded about 5:20 p.m. when Fremont detectives discovered a car in Hayward that had been reported stolen. The car, linked to a series of armed robberies around the Bay Area, was spotted at an apartment complex at 25200 Carlos Bee Blvd. near California State University East Bay, police said.
Police said that when detectives tried to stop the car at Campus and Oakes drives to talk to its four occupants, the driver rammed the unmarked patrol vehicle, injuring the two detectives, officials said. The detectives opened fire into the vehicle, hitting Elena multiple times in the passenger seat.
Two other occupants of the car were taken into custody. A fourth occupant fled on foot, but was arrested about 8 p.m. Wednesday night in San Francisco on an outstanding warrant for multiple robbery charges, police said Thursday. The person’s name was not immediately released.
Elena’s “family is feeling a pain that seems in this moment that will never go away,” wrote Miguel Minjares, Elena’s uncle, in a Go Fund Me page. “She is our Ebbie & always will be.”
Elena was the second oldest of nine children and a student at Golden Gate Community School in Pittsburg. And she was known in her family for being caring and dependable when it came to her brothers and sisters.
“She was a good girl, very respectful. When it came to her siblings, she was very responsible,” said Evelina Minjares, Elena’s 26-year-old cousin.
Elena shared a birthday with her 9-year-old brother. But instead of making the day about her, she would wake up early to get her brother a card and other birthday gifts to surprise him with, Flores said, as she smiled through tears.
A vigil was held for Elena on Wednesday night at Knoll Park in Antioch, just hours after her family was notified of her death. On Thursday, six white balloons still tied to a tree and the flames of flickering candles honored the young woman. A red teddy bear clutching a bouquet of six white roses rested against the tree.
Numerous handwritten messages were left behind, one reading, “Rest in paradise, beautiful.”
Hayward police and the Alameda County district attorney’s office are investigating the shooting.
“I was pissed. I’m still pissed,” Flores said. Police “should’ve been professional about it and not just start shooting. Aim. Aim at the tires. She was a little girl.”
Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, said many cities across the nation, including San Francisco, prohibit police from firing at moving vehicles.
Of course there are some exceptions to the rules, like if a driver or passenger were shooting at police.
“The standard is if someone is threatening with immediacy or imminency the life or bodily harm of someone else, you can take a life to save a life. But other than that, there’s no justification for the use of deadly force,” Alpert said.
“It’s a law enforcement dilemma,” he added. “Using good police work to apprehend a driver later is probably your best bet.”
The Hayward incident was the third fatal police shooting in the Bay Area in less than a week.
“I knew she wasn’t a perfect girl, but to us, she was,” Flores said. “It was all about her family and having fun and just being Ebbie.”