Coroner IDs girl killed by police in Los Angeles shooting
LOS ANGELES — The coroner’s office has identified the 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police Thursday when officers fired on an assault suspect and a bullet went through the wall and struck the girl as she was in a clothing store dressing room.
Police also fatally shot the suspect Thursday morning at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood area of the San Fernando Valley, police said.
The Los Angeles County coroner identified the girl as Valentina Orellana-Peralta and the suspect as Daniel Elena Lopez, 24. Online coroner records show their autopsies have been completed and their causes of death were both a gunshot wound to the chest.
LAPD officers have shot at least 37 people — 17 of them fatally — in 2021 after another police shooting occurred on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times. Those figures mark a dramatic rise in cases where officers shot or killed people in either of the last two years — 27 people were shot and 7 of them killed by LA police in all of 2020. In 2019, officers shot 26 people, killing 12.
In the last week, LA officers have killed four people — including two men in separate incidents on Saturday, the newspaper reported.
On Thursday, witnesses in North Hollywood told KCBS-TV that the man began acting erratically, threatening to throw items from the upper floor, and he attacked a woman with a bicycle lock shortly before noon as the store was crowded with holiday shoppers.
Officers answered a report of an assault and others of shots being fired, police said. Investigators have not found a gun at the scene.
The suspect was shot and died at the store but one of the bullets went through drywall behind the man and killed the girl, who was in a changing room with her mother, police said.
Officers found the teenager dead after seeing a hole in “a solid wall that you can’t see behind,” LAPD Assistant Chief Dominic Choi said.
Investigators didn’t immediately know whether she was in the dressing room before the violence began or ran in there to hide, he said.
“This chaotic incident resulting in the death of an innocent child is tragic and devastating for everyone involved,” Police Chief Michel Moore said in a statement late Thursday night. “I am profoundly sorry for the loss of this young girl’s life and I know there are no words that can relieve the unimaginable pain for the family.”