![]() It took effect July 1, only a few months after Rob Bonta was appointed California attorney general.īonta on Monday used his powers to file manslaughter charges against Salvador Sanchez, who was an off-duty Los Angeles police officer when he shot and killed a mentally disabled man inside a crowded Costco in the Riverside County city of Corona in 2019. ![]() A modified version of that idea took shape last year as Assembly Bill 1506, which passed and was signed into law. One answer was to turn the prosecution of cops accused of unlawful deadly force over to someone else, like the state attorney general. They relied too much on police department cooperation during criminal investigations and police union money at election time to risk that relationship. Reports on the too-cozy ties between local district attorneys and local police began piling up over the last decade, and they all generally found that elected prosecutors rarely prosecute police for killing unarmed civilians. In the photo behind Galipo is Kenneth French, from left, with parents Paola and Russell. Russell French's son Kenneth was fatally shot by an off-duty LAPD officer inside a Corona Costco in June 2019. He said Sanchez has changed his story, first saying their son struck him, causing him to lose consciousness, then saying he believed he had been shot and was under attack.Russell French, second from left, with his attorney Dale Galipo, left, and son Kevin French, right, at a news conference in August 2019. “Our family has just taken another blow, and we have lost complete faith in the U.S. Russell French said the family is “extremely heartbroken.” “Salvador Sanchez was clearly wrong, as he was not in imminent danger to fire 10 shots at an entire unarmed family,” Paola French said. They questioned what evidence Hestrin presented to a grand jury this month that formed the decision not to file charges. Paola and Russell French said Thursday that they were shocked that no charges were filed against the man who killed their son. Sal had no choice but to use deadly force to protect his young son and himself from assault.” We have two sets of parents trying to protect their child. “My client was assaulted and attacked, and what he did was excusable and reasonable under the law,” Salzman said. ![]() Ira Salzman, one of Sanchez’s attorneys, said Wednesday that the grand jury decision was a vindication. The district attorney’s analysis determined 3.8 seconds elapsed between when Sanchez was knocked to the ground and he began shooting. “The officer was hit in the back of the head while holding a child in his hands.” “It was out of the blue and unexpected,” Hestrin said. Prior to the confrontation between Sanchez and French, prosecutors said there was no previous interaction between the two. Sanchez is barely visible in the far-left frame. The two men become entangled and fall to the ground, and a woman is seen approaching them. The recording shows French, wearing a striped shirt, being pulled along by a male family member in a dark shirt. Hestrin played a portion of a low-quality surveillance video, but the images were grainy, and it was hard to decipher what was happening. But the video - released when District Attorney Mike Hestrin announced Wednesday that no charges would be filed in the case - provided no clear-cut answers. There were hopes that surveillance video from the store would help explain what happened. “The exact distance is unknown, but based on video and physical evidence, the estimated gap was about 20 feet at the time of the shooting,” Corona Police Sgt. Corona police officials said he was “seated” when he opened fire. Sanchez fired 10 times, prosecutors said. Sanchez’s attorneys said French knocked the officer to the ground for no reason, and Sanchez, who was holding his toddler, had no choice but to respond with lethal force. His parents, Russell and Paola French, were wounded in the gunfire. Kenneth French, 32, was killed June 14 in a food-tasting line inside the warehouse store by Officer Salvador Sanchez. Officers exit the Corona Costco following a shooting inside the wholesale warehouse store on June 14.
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