A vital new eyewitness account has emerged thanks to the work of a student journalist in the case of the killing of Andres Guardado at the hands of an LA Sheriff’s deputy who has a clouded record of prior accusations of evidence tampering and lying to investigators, and who has been suspended for highly questionable incidents involving intimidation and further lying to the department.
The eyewitness was driving a white Lexus and was parked at the entrance to the alley where the deadly foot chase ensued. She was likely the last person to have a conversation with the deceased, and her tale alleges serious misconduct on the part of the officers involved, and then a later arrest and attempt at intimidation that the department never publicized. Her account is corroborated by autopsy reports and ballistic forensics, and the deputy account is not. It also aligns with the account of the manager of the auto body shop where Andres Guardado was working at the time, who may or may not be an eyewitness himself but seems to have at least heard the shots and spoken to someone who did see the killing. Both claim the teen was unarmed and not a threat to officers when he was shot in the back multiple times. (more below the fold)
Background: A year ago this week an 18 year-old Salvadoran-American youth was killed in Gardena, California by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy under very clouded circumstances in the wake of city and nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd. The teen’s name was Andres Guardado and he was shot five times in the back after running down an alley at an auto body shop where he was working. In the aftermath, LA Sheriff’s deputies smashed video surveillance cameras and confiscated a DVR before obtaining a search warrant.
Information was lacking for weeks as the two involved deputies refused to speak to investigators, and LA Sheriff Villanueva tried to tamp down vocal, but mostly localized protests with business-as-usual playbook patter and appeals for calm and the passage of time while the department investigated it’s own. The immediate narrative seemed to emerge from the ether as six shells and a handgun were recovered near the body. Somehow, without the deputies filing an incident report or speaking to investigators, LASD painted a picture of a teen being spotted with a handgun, a foot chase ensuing that ended with an officer firing his weapon, and the kid dying. Their story stunk then and it has only gotten worse since. The first clue that this was not all-kosher police work was when the department made the ludicrous claim that surveillance cameras were destroyed in an effort to locate memory cards, as if burglar cameras would store the footage where vandals could access them on the outside of a building. Statements of this caliber were made by spokes-persons at pressers and a dutiful local press repeated them dutifully, for the most part until one LA Times investigative reporter discovered the names and background of the two deputies involved, one Miguel Vega, the seeming shooter and his partner, Christopher Hernandez.
The family was able to finally get a private autopsy performed, and released a partial report that confirmed the rumor that he had been shot in the back. Public pressure immediately grew and caused the silent deputies to speak to LASD investigators the following day, and afterwards their separate lawyers told the press a tale of Andres’ surrender and then “reaching for a handgun” he placed on the ground seconds before, and how the officer was forced to quick draw and shoot him 5x in the back as the teen lay prone on his stomach. The tale roughly explained the family’s autopsy report but the very next day the LA Coroner defied Sheriff Villanueva’s “public hold” on the county’s autopsy and released the entire autopsy report to the press, complete with trajectories of the fatal wounds that seemed to strongly contradict the killer’s account of a prone figure, with one fatal shot traveling DOWN into the heart, and four bullets that passed UP through the torso. It’s likely the first shot was when the teen was on his knees, back to the deputy Miguel Vega. While it’s true the partner corroborates the presence of a gun after the fact, it’s also sure that he cannot or will not corroborate all of Vega’s account, claiming he couldn’t see the reaching for the gun from his angle. Sadly, most of the press attention was concerned simply with the shots being from behind and the fact that Vega was caught in a lie, or seemingly so was not widely reported.
Eventually, the Coroner was additionally moved to call for a Corner’s inquest to determine the reason for death, in a break with 30 years of precedent in LA County. This was another sad affair with the judge appointed failing to back subpoenas or the ability to get LASD witnesses to give ANY testimony. The killer sent a note saying he was “temporarily out of the country,” and the investigators from Homicide claimed to individually decide to plead their fifth amendment rights without instruction from their superiors. The partner Deputy also failed to appear at the inquest, and the whole affair concluded with a whimper, not a bang. To this day, only the LASD has control of the investigation and the evidence. (A new DA has been elected, but no action was forthcoming on this front.) Since that time, LASD has claimed the investigation is “ongoing” (read: stalled forever, no conclusions or evidence made public) due to “witnesses who have not been located.” As this new report proves, the most important witness, the woman in the white Lexus had been interviewed, while being held in jail virtually incommunicado in September. The Inquest was in November.
Hopefully, the one year anniversary of this highly suspicious killing will rekindle attention on this sordid affair. I’ve blogged extensively on this as the case unfolded and those who want more details can see my past diaries here on Kos, or simply read the wikipedia entry on the killing. But to be frank, it’s unlikely we will see justice done here, in my opinion. The family has retained a good law firm and has a solid shot at getting a wrongful death lawsuit settled, but that is all. If there was to be a grand jury we would have seen it by now, unless this new witness account and the one year anniversary can get enough press and public pressure going.
Still, one can’t just look away.