Prom Night From Hell: LAPD Officer Threatens Teen Girl With Shotgun At Underage Party At His House

Nataly Aguilar still shakes and hyperventilates when she recalls the night that an alcohol-fueled prom after-party, hosted at an off-duty LAPD officer's home in Santa Clarita, ended with the officer pointing a shotgun at her and threatening her life.

“I thought I was going to die,” the 17-year-old said during an October interview with L.A. TACO, six months after the April 2024 incident.

It was sometime after three in the morning when Aguilar decided it was time to head home after spending roughly five hours partying in off-duty LAPD Officer Vincent Deglinnocenti’s backyard with Deglinnocenti’s own daughter and more than 100 other teens.

Just before she left, a physical fight broke out between Rachel Varon—a Hart High School campus supervisor at the time, whom Aguilar knew from school—and Varon’s own teenage daughter.

Aguilar missed the altercation. But she saw the elder Varon crying outside afterward and tried to console her. 

“And then that's when [Deglinnocenti] came over to Rachel and grabbed her by the arm,” Aguilar recalled. “And he was like, ‘Come on, let's go inside. Don't get any advice from minors that don't know anything.’”

When Aguilar questioned Deglinnocenti, he became enraged and began cursing her out, she said.

After a brief argument, Deglinnocenti darted into his house and within “seconds” returned with a shotgun, according to Aguilar.

“Fuck out, right now,” Deglinnocenti shouted at the unarmed teen while seemingly pointing the shotgun right at her, cell phone video footage reviewed by L.A. TACO shows.

The sound of the off-duty LAPD officer racking the shotgun sent people scattering. 

“Right when he clocked it back is when I just ran,” a witness told a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy a day after the incident.

“He started pointing [the gun] at me,” Aguilar recalled. “And then I entered in shock because I've never been put in that situation before. So I, like, kind of froze for a few seconds, and then I reacted and I turned around to see if anyone was there.”

“But I didn't see anybody,” she said.

When Aguilar walked away from Deglinnocenti, moving down his driveway and into the street, he followed her, while hurling more insults at the teen. 

“He was, like, saying, ‘Where you going, fat ass?’ And just saying stuff like that,” Aguilar said. Cell phone video footage reviewed by L.A. TACO backs up Aguilar’s account of what happened.

“I’ll send your ass to heaven to-fucking-day,” the 26-year veteran LAPD officer yelled at Aguilar, as Varon stood in between him and the teen, struggling to calm him down. A neighbor’s Ring camera recorded the confrontation.

“Say goodbye!” Deglinnocenti yelled in the street.

By this time, both adults, Deglinnocenti and Varon, were visibly intoxicated, according to Aguilar. 

“He couldn’t walk right, he couldn’t balance himself, and he was talking very belligerently,” Aguilar alleged. Earlier in the evening, she saw the off-duty officer drinking alcohol and witnessed Varon “taking shots with minors.”

“I think once she saw him pull out the shotgun, it sobered her up a bit into realizing that he was in the wrong,” Aguilar said. “She kept, like, telling me to chill and she kept telling him to stop, too.” 

When investigators with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) walked through Deglinnocenti’s backyard later that day, they found it littered with empty cans and bottles of booze.

“Lots and lots and lots of alcohol,” Deputy Reeder remarked with his body camera recording, as he poked around the backyard.

“Ya … tons,” Deputy Montano responded, standing over a table covered in Twisted Teas and dozens of red plastic cups. 

“Good thing there was nothing but juveniles here, right?” Reeder said sarcastically, just before turning off his body camera and exiting the backyard.

As Aguilar walked away from Deglinnocenti, she said something under her breath, prompting Deglinnocenti to take several steps towards her and again raise the shotgun at her in the street. As he continued yelling at her, Varon ushered him back to the driveway.

When Aguilar spotted a friend nearby, she walked towards them. Then the two left the party together and Aguilar went home.

Instead of telling her parents what had happened when she got back to her house, she “slept it off.” Having never been put in a situation like this before, she was scared. 

“I didn't know what to do,” Aguilar said.

A few days after the incident, she got a notification on her phone from the News Break app: Two people that she knew had been arrested for allegedly shooting Deglinnocenti on the same morning of the prom party.

Later, she learned that not long after she left the party, three people wearing bandanas covering their faces allegedly approached Varon and Deglinnocenti in the off-duty officer’s driveway. Varon recognized two of the boys from school, according to an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) police report reviewed by L.A. TACO, and pleaded with them not to escalate things further.

“Don’t do it, please stop,” she begged.

When she tried to pull down the facemask of the person she didn’t recognize, she heard a single gunshot, Varon later told investigators. 

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rachel. I didn’t do it,” the person said just before fleeing, according to Varon’s initial account of what happened.

Then she realized Deglinnocenti had been shot in the right leg.

Staring down the barrel of a shotgun has left Aguilar in a state of acute trauma, her therapist confirms. Noises still “trigger” her, and sometimes she can’t fall asleep, Aguilar says.

“She reached out after the incident and was in a very acute state of stress, before trauma,” said her therapist, who asked not to be named in this story for professional reasons. 

After speaking with her therapist, Aguilar told her family what happened at the prom after-party. Her therapist also recommended that she file a report with the Sheriff’s Department. The next day, Aguilar went to the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station and recorded a statement on camera. 

A little more than a month later, on May 31, Deputy Cecilia Conrad visited Aguilar and her family at their home. When she arrived, Aguilar told the deputy that she wanted to file charges against Deglinnocenti.

She then explained to Deputy Conrad what happened; the fight that she didn’t see, Varon crying outside, and Deglinnocenti quickly brandishing a shotgun and threatening to send her to heaven.

She showed the deputy the cell phone video that her friend recorded of the off-duty officer holding the firearm and following her into the street before threatening to end her life. The deputy then recorded Aguilar's friend's cell phone footage with her own phone.

The meeting ended early when Deputy Conrad rushed off to deal with another call.

“I’ll call you back, okay? And then we can talk a little more,” Conrad said.

Aguilar never heard from Deputy Conrad after that and her police report has not resulted in Deglinnocenti being charged with any crimes. 

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office told L.A. TACO that no case against Deglinnocenti has been filed. 

“Reach out to law enforcement to learn if a possible case has been presented to us for filing consideration,” the spokesperson suggested.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent via email.

I feel like I'm being treated like I'm not a victim, and that this never happened that night. It did happen.”

Nataly Aguilar

For Deglinnocenti, on the other hand, the justice system has worked as intended. 

Two juveniles and two adults were quickly arrested, just days after the veteran LAPD officer was shot in his driveway.

In June, one of the juveniles was sentenced to house arrest.

The three remaining suspects are facing charges of auto theft, assault with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy.

When LASD investigators visited Deglinnocenti in the hospital on the evening of the same day he was shot, they found the officer laid up on a gurney, his right femur exploded from the impact of the bullet.

Deglinnocenti told them that after Varon and her daughter “had a pretty good” physical fight, he helped separate the two. After things settled down, he was confronted by “a group of younger male Hispanics… who were pissed,” he told investigators, and he saw some of them reach for their waistbands. But he admitted he never saw anyone produce a firearm.

Varon’s son, Kaden, who helped break up the physical fight between his mother and sister, also initially told investigators that he saw one of the people who approached Deglinnocenti reach for a gun in their waistband, after the altercation between his mom and sister. But he did not see the alleged firearm.

Deglinnocenti told the people to leave but they refused to and instead kept walking towards him, he told investigators.

“So I was like, I’m not going to play this game.”

Deglinnocenti admitted to going inside his house and retrieving his shotgun.

“I stepped a foot out of my doorstep and racked the action… they all left,” he said.

But he made no mention of pointing the shotgun at Aguilar. Or following her into the street while cursing her out. Or threatening to send her to heaven, despite witness statements, cell phone video, and surveillance video footage proving otherwise.

Deglinnocenti did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent via email and text message. Nor did Rachel Varon, the former Hart High School campus supervisor.

It’s unclear if Deglinnocenti has faced any consequences within the LAPD for pulling a shotgun on Aguilar. 

When L.A. TACO reached out to the LAPD for comment, Detective Timothy Hope from the department's Internal Affairs Division, the unit in charge of investigating alleged officer misconduct, called the reporter of this story, asking for more information about the incident.

A day later, Detective Hope texted Aguilar.

Aguilar yearns to see the same justice that Deglinnocenti has received from the system. 

Despite going to the Sheriff's Department multiple times, Aguilar says they never did anything to help her.

“They just kept neglecting us,” she said earlier this month.

“It's obvious that they didn’t want to do anything,” Aguilar’s father told L.A. TACO.

“I feel like I'm being treated like I'm not a victim, and that this never happened that night,” Aguilar said. “It did happen.”

She believes that Deglinnocenti is being “protected” because he’s a Los Angeles police officer. 

“If there was a [person of color] on the street, it would have been [handled] ASAP, but it's him, so they don't want to do anything,” Aguilar said. “That doesn't make any sense to me.”

The trauma from the incident extends beyond Aguilar, to the rest of her family.

Aguilar’s mom says she’s afraid for her daughter. She drops Aguilar off and picks up her up everywhere she goes. And she doesn’t let her go to parties anymore.

As an immigrant who fled her home in Central America, she says it’s heartbreaking to see the same corruption that she tried to escape also exists here in the U.S.

“It's sad,” Aguilar said. “Like, that's actually sad that people have to live with their trauma and then he just can walk out free.”

L.A. TACO reviewed police reports, body worn camera footage, surveillance footage, and cell phone video obtained through an anonymous source for this report.