Last month, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) released video footage that shows a veteran LAPD officer chasing a young man through a Pacoima housing project before fatally shooting him in the back as he ran away.
At around 8:50 PM on June 11, LAPD Officer Daniel Ramirez, along with two additional officers assigned to the Foothill Division's Gang Enforcement Unit, jumped out of a squad car and immediately began chasing 20-year-old Alexander Aguilar-Larios on foot through San Fernando Gardens, a city-managed housing project, after Aguilar-Larios fled from a BMW that he was a passenger of.
The officers pulled the driver of the BMW over for “traveling at a high rate of speed,” according to an LAPD spokesperson. After the officers began running after Aguilar-Larios, the driver fled.
“Stop or I’m going to shoot you,” Ramirez shouted as he trailed Aguilar-Larios with his pistol drawn through the quiet, WWII-era, garden-style apartment complex at night.
Six seconds later, Ramirez shot at Aguilar-Larios four times in quick succession, after the 20-year-old tripped on a patio, fell to the ground, then rose to his feet again, and attempted to continue running away. He was shot with his back turned to Ramirez.
More than eight minutes after the shooting, an LAPD officer rolled Aguilar-Larios’ lifeless-looking body onto his back and began performing chest compressions, according to body camera footage. Approximately five minutes later, paramedics arrived at the scene and transported Aguilar-Larios to a local hospital where the 20-year-old was pronounced dead.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner lists Aguilar-Larios’ cause of death as “gunshot wond (sic) to the back.” It is unclear how many times he was shot. An autopsy report has not been finalized as of the publishing of this story.
Aguilar-Larios appeared to be holding a handgun during the foot chase and at the time of the shooting. Body camera footage shows the firearm hitting the ground just before Aguilar-Larios goes down.
However, the footage does not show Aguilar-Larios pointing the gun at anyone during the foot pursuit.
And in their own retelling of the shooting, the LAPD notably never suggests that Aguilar-Larios pointed the gun at any of the officers. Instead, LAPD Captain Kelly Muniz, a spokesperson for the department, said that “as [Aguilar-Larios] stood up to continue fleeing, an officer involved shooting occurred.”
In an interview with Univision 34 Los Angeles, Esmeralda Larios, the mother of Aguilar-Larios, said that when she first found out her son had been shot, he was in the hospital and she still had hope he might survive.
“But after a half hour they told me he was dead,” Larios said. “So imagine my agony. To know that he couldn’t be saved.”
“At first, they said it was for a [traffic] stop,” Larios told Univision. “But they didn’t follow after the driver or the car but followed my son, who was the passenger.”
“The problem is that we’re not very sure about it here. He had a gun, but he didn't use it. He threw it and he was shot in the back. He wasn’t… pointing at them, they weren’t in danger.” Larios said.
“I lost my twin brother,” Aguilar-Larios’ sister, Jade, wrote on a GoFundMe page. “My mother has lost a son, our entire family is grieving.”
According to Jade, Aguilar-Larios was coming home from trade school on the night that he was killed by police and was getting dropped off at a friend’s house.
“The police followed him,” she wrote. “Alex was worried about the police due to the continuous harassment from the cops just from being profiled as a gang member when he is not. The cops went on foot pursuit after Alex and shot him 5x and hit him 3x in the back.”
Aguilar-Larios’ family is asking for $10,000 in donations to help cover funeral expenses.
“Alex was 20 years old, going to school full-time, and worked hard,” Jade wrote.
"He was a good kid.”
