On a late afternoon in early March, Hector Alaniz’s mother called 911 desperately pleading for help.
Her schizophrenic, autistic, and bipolar 23-year-old son was expressing suicidal ideations while he sat in a brown Chevy Malibu on the border of Filipinotown and Silver Lake.
A day earlier, Alaniz’s mother had called a county-run 1-800 mental health line asking for assistance, but they told her that they couldn’t do anything because her son was reportedly armed with a BB gun.
During the call with the 911 dispatcher the next day, Alaniz’s mother told the person on the other end of the call what happened when she called the 1-800 number and repeatedly stressed that her son had possession of the BB gun and had expressed that he wanted to hurt himself.
“What my son wants is for the police to come and kill him because he doesn’t want to live anymore,” she told the dispatcher.