More than two months after he was shot five times in the back by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the family of 18-year-old Andrés Guardado has filed a wrongful death suit against the county, the sheriff's department, and deputies Miguel Vega and partner Chris Hernandez, alleging they “not only used unreasonable and excessive force in fatally shooting the young man but were possibly acting in connection and in agreement with members of one or more LASD gangs of which they may be affiliated,” a release said.
”The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of Elisa and Cristobal Guardado, seeks to hold the defendants accountable for violating various civil rights as well as the California Bane Act that resulted in the execution of 18-year-old decedent, Andres Guardado.”
“As alleged in the complaint, Deputy Miguel Vega shot and killed Andres Guardado on June 18, 2020,” the release said. “Vega and his partner, Deputy Hernandez, arrived to Andres’ place of employment and in a display of unreasonable and excessive force, immediately drew their weapons and chased Andres down an alleyway in violation of defendants’ policies and procedures. Without provocation and with conscious disregard, Deputy Vega discharged his firearm no less than six times—five (5) bullets struck Andres in the back, ‘each of those five gunshot wounds possessed an independent lethal capacity, ultimately causing his tragic and untimely death.’”
As we’ve previously noted, family and advocates have spent months asking questions and receiving few answers, with police instead spinning unfounded allegations about a gun they found and claim belonged to Guardado. The L.A. Sheriff's Department also made an intentional decision to mention a number of drug incidents near the area where Guardado worked as an unofficial auto body shop security guard, but then admitted “the department has no information linking Guardado to any of the previous incidents at the location,” Fox 11 reported last month.
What has emerged though is a disturbing allegation from a fellow sheriff’s deputy identifying both Vega and Hernandez as potential recruits for a racist and violent law enforcement gang.
“Deputy Austreberto ‘Art’ Gonzalez, who has worked at Compton for over five years, identified both Vega and Hernandez as ‘prospects’ of the ‘Executioners’ deputy gang during a deposition Aug. 11 for a case of police use of excessive force unrelated to Guardado's killing,” NBC News reported. “According to Gonzalez's testimony, which was obtained by NBC News, the ‘Executioners’ use violence against other deputies and community members as well as illegal arrest quotas to increase their standing within the group.”
The wrongful lawsuit states that the department already knew that both Vega and Hernandez were unfit to work in law enforcement even before the alleged gang affiliation came to light, having a “history of improper uses of unjustified excessive force, improper discharging of their firearms, bad traffic and pedestrian stops, failing to follow proper procedures, making false statements during investigations, and other improper conduct.”
“Yet, they were never disciplined, or were not disciplined properly, and were never trained or re-trained properly, and were never removed from service,” the lawsuit continues. Andrés Guardado should be here. But because of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, he’s dead.
“By filing this lawsuit, we are not only committing to expose the truth surrounding the unjustified shooting of Andres Guardado, but seeking to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again to anyone in our communities,” attorney Nicholas Yoka said in the release. “The Guardado family deserves their day in court and they are now taking the first step toward getting justice for the death of their son at the hands of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
