- Oct 17, 2011
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Jeri Rees said her 21-year-old nephew underwent six hours of surgery and that doctors found shards of plastic, glass and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, including a metal piece lodged 7 mm from a carotid artery.
She said doctors did not want to remove the shrapnel near the artery out of fear that it could kill him.
Several videos of Friday’s incident were shared on social media. One video shows demonstrators, who were protesting the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good, throwing orange safety cones at the agents, who were standing guard outside of the Santa Ana federal building.
In the video, at least one agent appears to fire nonlethal rounds at the crowd, hitting one woman in the leg before aiming and striking the victim in the face.
The video shows the victim dropping to the ground after being shot, holding their face as the crowd retreats. The same agent then drags the victim by the hood of their jacket; they appear to be choking, grasping at the jacket binding their neck as blood pours from their left eye.
“The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” she said, recalling what her nephew told her.
“This constitutes as deadly force as far as the law is concerned,” said Ed Obayashi of the video. The Modoc County sheriff’s deputy and legal advisor to police agencies, who has testified in similar cases, said that “all the training manuals and [legal] cases say you don’t aim at the face because these projectiles can cause serious injury [or] death.”
Obayashi said, based on law enforcement use-of-force standards, an officer can deploy deadly force if they feel their life is in imminent danger, or that they are in danger of great bodily harm. “I just don’t see that here,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department said the only violence they were aware of that night were demonstrators tossing orange cones at the agents.
In an email response to The Times, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, said a “mob of 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside of the federal building.”
She said doctors did not want to remove the shrapnel near the artery out of fear that it could kill him.
Several videos of Friday’s incident were shared on social media. One video shows demonstrators, who were protesting the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good, throwing orange safety cones at the agents, who were standing guard outside of the Santa Ana federal building.
In the video, at least one agent appears to fire nonlethal rounds at the crowd, hitting one woman in the leg before aiming and striking the victim in the face.
The video shows the victim dropping to the ground after being shot, holding their face as the crowd retreats. The same agent then drags the victim by the hood of their jacket; they appear to be choking, grasping at the jacket binding their neck as blood pours from their left eye.
“The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” she said, recalling what her nephew told her.
“This constitutes as deadly force as far as the law is concerned,” said Ed Obayashi of the video. The Modoc County sheriff’s deputy and legal advisor to police agencies, who has testified in similar cases, said that “all the training manuals and [legal] cases say you don’t aim at the face because these projectiles can cause serious injury [or] death.”
Obayashi said, based on law enforcement use-of-force standards, an officer can deploy deadly force if they feel their life is in imminent danger, or that they are in danger of great bodily harm. “I just don’t see that here,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department said the only violence they were aware of that night were demonstrators tossing orange cones at the agents.
In an email response to The Times, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, said a “mob of 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside of the federal building.”
