A federal jury handed down a verdict on Friday that will mean $21 million for the family of a pregnant 16-year-old girl who was shot and killed by undercover Fremont police more than five years ago in California. Elena “Ebbie” Mondragon was a passenger in a BMW police said hit an unmarked van officers were riding in on March 14, 2017, The Associated Press reported. The decision was "a tremendous verdict for the family" of Elena Mondragon, John Burris, an attorney representing the family, told the news wire.
The city of Fremont will be responsible for $10.2 million of the award, while the man driving the BMW will have to pay the remainder in what The Mercury News reported was the largest sole lawsuit payout in the city police department's history. “We hope a verdict like this sends the message that police departments need to humble themselves in the face of community demands that they do better,” Adante Pointer, an attorney for Mondragon’s mother, told the newspaper.
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Melissa Nold, another of the family's lawyers, told The Mercury News this is the kind of case you would normally settle. “Regardless of whether you feel like you had some sort of justification for why you were there and what you were doing, when the result is accidentally killing a child, that would be the kind of case to settle,” she said. “They banked that nobody was going to care about Ebbie. That’s what I believe. They looked at the situation and who she was and who her family was and decided that her life didn’t matter, that her life didn’t have value.”
Fremont spokesperson Geneva Bosques told The Mercury News on Saturday morning: “The city is aware of the jury verdict and has no further comment at this time.”
It's unclear if the city plans to appeal the verdict, which it can still do.
It took the seven-person jury about two days to come to the decision that while 19-year-old Rico Tiger, who drove the BMW and was suspected of violent armed robberies, was 51% responsible for the teen's death, Fremont Sgt. Jeremy Miskella and officers Ghailan Chahouati and Joel Hernandez acted negligently in their covert operation, The Mercury News reported.
The officers and sergeant were part of a multi-agency task force that had tracked the stolen car Tiger drove to an apartment complex in Hayward, a city about 13 miles northwest of Fremont. They had planned to block the BMW in at the complex and arrest Tiger, the newspaper reported.
But when Tiger tried to flee from a space in between law enforcement vehicles and a carport, Hernandez fired twice at the BMW and Miskella fired five times, both using rifles. A key element in the case, according to The Mercury News, was where Miskella, who had driven a Honda Pilot positioned behind the police van during the shooting, was standing when he fired what was likely the deadly shot at Mondragon.
Mondragon's family attorney argued in court that Miskella was out of harm's way while officers' attorneys tried to make the case that Miskella was nearly hit by the BMW. Ultimately, the jury determined Miskella was 25% responsible for Mondragon's death, and Chahouati and Hernandez were 12% responsible.
“I think this verdict says that our community is unwilling to give officers a free pass to behave recklessly, and then in the aftermath, take a position that they cannot be held accountable for their reckless conduct,” Pointer told The Mercury News.
Joseph Geha, a journalist covering the case for The Mercury News and East Bay Times, said in a Twitter thread that although some officers were wearing body cameras they didn't record the incident and other officers on the scene didn't have theirs on. Fremont police refused to meet the requests of journalists who sent public records requests in about the shooting, and officers from a Fremont police union donated $10,000 to Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley's campaign while her office was overseeing the 2017 case and another police shooting. “She cleared officers in both cases,” Geha tweeted.
O'Malley reportedly told Geha the donation didn't influence her office's decision. "She said she'd donate the money to a local domestic violence shelter, and said she asked the Attorney General Xavier Becerra to review her office's report of the Mondragon shooting," Geha tweeted. "But then I followed up. Becerra's office, after initially confirming it was doing the review, backed off of it, citing a conflict of interest, because the state's dept of justice has officers on the same task force that killed Mondragon."
Geha added:
Instead, Ventura County's DA reviewed O'Malley's report, and found no problems. Civil rights attorney John Burris, who is one of the attorneys representing Mondragon's family, said the review by another DA was like a "wink and a blink."
Almost forgot to mention the kicker: When the Fremont police union made the $10,000 donation to DA Nancy O'Malley, the president of the police union was Sgt. Jeremy Miskella, the same officer who fatally shot Mondragon.
And that was hardly the end of the alleged deception and foul dealings associated with this shooting investigation and city response to the lawsuit. Through its attorneys, the city implied Mondragon deserved what happened to her. It tried to subpoena the teen’s Planned Parenthood records; block any description of her as a teen, “innocent teenager,” or “kid”; and prevent the jury from finding out she was pregnant, Geha tweeted.
"Ebbie struggled,” Patrick Moriarty, an attorney for the officers, reportedly said in closing arguments. “It appeared that she wasn’t going to school, she didn’t have a job and she had a taste in men that were not good for her."
Moriarty also came after the child’s mother, Michelle Mondragon, Geha tweeted. He reportedly said that asking "difficult questions" about the teen's character was appropriate and that her mom was "the one who wants to get paid."
Geha concluded his description of the case with this on Saturday:
There's more to this case, but it's late, so here's a recap: Fremont police killed an innocent pregnant teenager with no body cameras on, denied records requests about it, blamed it on anyone but themselves, and then maligned the dead teen to try and avoid paying damages.
It is utterly disgusting.