Three gunshots to the front of the head settle the disagreement. and how soon you pass away. Equipped with fresh scientific proof, Bobby Jay Steele’s parents now feel their sixteen-year-old son was slain by enraged Los Angeles police officers two years ago when they trapped him in an attic following the shooting death of Officer James Beyea.
The boy’s body was then allegedly shot by the officers, according to the boy’s family. “They killed him as payback for a fellow officer’s death,” Carol Watson, the parents’ lawyer, stated. “They killed him because they had him in an attic and there were no witnesses.
However, four LAPD officers, who are defendants in a wrongful death trial taking place in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contend that Steele was in fact carrying Beyea’s service revolver and that he continued to threaten law enforcement while inside the dimly lit upstairs loft, even as he was being shot in the head multiple times.
A. Wallace Tashima, U.S. District Judge, presided over the hearing of the civil lawsuit on Monday. It asks for damages that are not mentioned. Another week of the trial is anticipated. Sgts. Gary Nanson and Mark Mooring, along with Officers John Hall and Salvador Apodaca, are among the defendants.
The question for the nine jurors is to determine if Steele actually constituted a threat to the police or if they killed him in order to exact revenge for the death of Beyea. Steele was shot twice, once straight between the eyes and again just below the right, in a span of two to three minutes.
He took a fourth bullet to the back. Steele’s family called in former Bellvue, Washington, police chief D. P. Van Blaricom as an expert witness to support their case. Van Blaricom stated that the revolver was left upside down amid the attic rafters adjacent to the boy’s body, that the dead officer’s gun had been tampered with, and that it did not contain the boy’s fingerprints.
