LAPD Officer Who Fatally Shot 14-Year-Old Girl In Dressing Room Wanted To ‘Change’ Policing
Los Angeles police Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. operated a nonprofit for at-risk-youth and volunteered as a high school football coach. He promoted community policing in the hopes of changing racism in policing. Now, the Black officer finds himself at the center of outrage over a police shooting.
According to The New York Times, Jones faces at least two investigations, as well as a probable lawsuit for the fatal shooting on Dec. 23 of Valentina Orellana Peralta, 14, who was a bystander at a North Hollywood Burlington store where police responded to an ongoing assault in the store.
A store employee told a police dispatcher that a man, later identified as Daniel Elena Lopez, 24, was attacking customers with a bicycle lock, the Times reported. Other 911 callers said Lopez had a gun and fired shots. Officers arrived at the clothing store with weapons drawn.
Jones was seen on body camera footage racing ahead of the other cops who urged him to “slow down” and “hold up,” according to the Times. Jones shot and killed Lopez, but one of the bullets he fired ricocheted off the floor and through a wall where Valentina Orellana Peralta was hiding in a dressing room with her mother.
The Los Angeles Daily reported that Jones’ actions are viewed by many, including the family’s lawyer Rahul Ravipudi, as being reckless by the way he’s seen in the video rushing ahead of the other officers and appearing to fire hastily at a fleeing Lopez.
Jones moved to L.A. 15 years ago to seek a career in the entertainment industry, the Times reported. When that didn’t work out, he joined the LAPD as a community relations specialist and patrol officer in North Hollywood.
In 2020, he created a nonprofit named Officers for Change, according to Daily News. The organization’s mission was to mentor and help kids living in low-income communities. Days before the shooting, he organized a toy drive for disadvantaged children.
On his Twitter account, Jones wrote messages about his personal experience with racism and discussed his hopes for improving the community-police relationship.
“I’m a Black man, I’m the father of a Black son,” he wrote in an Aug. 27 tweet, according to the Times. “I’m the LAPD. I have the power & determination to affect CHANGE in the community.”
He now finds himself facing civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Valentina’s family, as well as possible criminal charges. At a news conference on Thursday (Dec. 30) outside LAPD headquarters, Crump said the girl’s death was avoidable.
“We think that they have training for these exact situations and dynamics,” he said. “Literally, you’re going into a public facility — how do you use the least intrusive measure to ensure that innocent people aren’t harmed?”
Valentina’s mother, Soledad Peralta, criticized the officers at the scene for allegedly leaving her daughter to die alone on the floor while they evacuated other people in the store, according to the Daily Beast.
Crump described Valentina, who immigrated with her mother from Chile, as “beautiful, intelligent, and had the whole world ahead of her,” the Daily Beast reported.
He continued, “She made exceptional grades in an English-speaking school, even though English was not her native tongue…She dreamed of being an engineer, working in technology, building robots to make the world a better place.”
Meanwhile, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his investigation into the shooting is in the early stages, the Times reported. He’s looking into possible criminal liability and vowed to conduct the probe “with the same objective eyes that we do all our other cases.”
Jones’ attorney, Leslie Wilcox, said he “was acting the way he was trained to do,” adding that Jones is “truly devastated” and “heartbroken,” the Daily News reported.
“This is something he says that he will be living with every day for the rest of his life. He is trying to figure out a process to keep moving forward when he knows her family can’t,” Wilcox said. “He’s just shattered.”
