Los Angeles police officers testify in civil trial over store shooting that killed teenage girl
The plaintiffs are the parents of a 14-year-old girl who died when an officer fired an AR-15 at an assault suspect three times in a Burlington Coat Factory in North Hollywood in 2021.
A former Los Angeles police officer testified this week that he wrongly believed another officer disobeyed his commands before that officer opened fire in a clothing store at an assault suspect, killing the man and a 14-year-old girl who was in a nearby dressing room.
Michael Mazur acknowledged he yelled “slow down” at Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. and didn’t believe he had, but he testified he realized Jones “actually did” after he reviewed footage from body-worn cameras.
“In the moments before those three bullets were fired out of that AR-15, you were trying to slow things down, true?” asked Nick Rowley, who represents the parents of Valentina Orellana-Peralta.
“True the — at which point, sir? I’m trying to specify at which point, sir,” Mazur said.
“Sir, when you were saying, ‘Jones, slow down. Jones, slow down’ you were trying to slow him down, weren’t you?” Rowley asked.
“Yeah, I focused on him, correct,” Mazur answered.
“And he didn’t listen to you, did he? He kept going?” Rowley asked.
“With review of the body-worn, he actually did. But at the time, no, I did not assess that he was,” Mazur answered.
“You thought he was not listening to you at the time?” Rowley asked.
“At the time, sir,” Mazur answered.
Mazur, Jones and four other officers were searching for a pantless man who assaulted a woman with a bike lock in a Burlington Coat Factory in North Hollywood on Dec. 23, 2021, when Jones ran to the front with his AR-15. Jones fired three times at the assailant and killed him, but a bullet also skipped off the floor, pierced a drywall partition and struck Orellana-Peralta, who was hiding in a dressing room with her mother while trying on dresses for her quinceañera.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Frank Tavelman is allowing the entire trial to be video recorded and streamed online, so I’ve been in the courtroom recording from the Courtroom View Network pool stream and am sharing testimony videos online.
A clip of Tavelman halting Rowley’s questions about Mazur’s meetings with lawyers has drawn attention as attorneys debate the issue in the comments.
Rowley raised the issue in his exam after Mazur testified he now doesn’t believe Jones disobeyed him.
Rowley said Mazur has communicated with “these lawyers,” referring to defense lawyers Christian Richard Bojorquez of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and James Touchstone of the Fullerton-based law firm Jones & Mayer.
Judge Tavelman sustained an objection under California Evidence Code § 352, which allows a judge to exclude relevant evidence if its helpfulness is substantially outweighed by potential prejudice, confusion or repetitiveness.
Travelman also offered his own reason, saying Rowley was presuming “facts not in evidence, that he’s communicated with these two representatives from the city.”
“He said he had a lawyer. I’m assuming it was a different lawyer than the ones that are present in court. Is that correct, sir?” the judge asked.
“No, your honor,” Mazur said, identifying Bojorquez as his lawyer.
Tavelman reversed course and overruled the objection.
The judge jumped in again a few questions later as Rowley asked Mazur how often he met with the attorneys.
“The court’s going to sustain its own objection under 352. It is common for witnesses to meet with lawyers to prepare cases. That’s not uncommon or inappropriate in any way. So I’m going to sustain my own objection, because I think it would lead to unnecessary speculation,” said Tavelman, who’s been a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge since 2014. He was a Los Angeles deputy district attorney from 1999 to 2013.
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Rowley pushed back, saying, “I think the amount of time isn’t getting into the attorney-client privilege,” but Tavelman still wouldn’t allow the questions.
“It’s leaving the jury with potentially the wrong impression that lawyers shouldn’t be meeting with witnesses before they testify, and that routinely happens in almost every case,” the judge said.
Rowley said Mazur is “a client” and not a witness, but Tavelman said, “I’m not looking to debate the issue with you, counsel. You can ask you another question.”
Rowley moved on, but he questioned Mazur about his testimony preparation again this morning after discussing the issue with the judge outside the jury’s presence.
Rowley, a nationally prominent trial lawyer and founder of Trial Lawyers for Justice, commented on my Instagram clip tonight: “I had a discussion w the Judge this morning and after hearing me out he allowed me to go into this very subject!!! Officer Mazur testified that he spent a total of six weeks preparing to be cross examined by me! It almost 200 trials and 25 years of practice, I have never heard of a witness being prepared for 6 weeks.”
He said in another comment, “Judge Tavelman is actually a very good and fair Judge. We are happy to be in front of him. He intervenes with the defense also. He’s just doing his job and is always willing to reconsider his rulings. He has been right 90+ percent of the time with his rulings and I do not believe he is bias against us.”
On Wednesday, Mazur also testified he told Jones to “sling” his rifle, but he disputed Rowley’s assertion about why he did so.
Mazur eventually acknowledged he wanted the officer to be part of the “arrest team” after Rowley reminded him of his deposition in which he said that. Rowley initially wanted to play a video clip of the deposition for the jury, but Judge Tavelman said he could only use the deposition to try to refresh Mazur’s recollection.
“There’s no playing of the clip. You can bring up the transcript and let him review it and see if it refreshes his memory first, because he’s saying he doesn’t remember. Not that he didn’t say it,” Tavelman said.
Tavelman discussed the issue with the attorneys in chambers so we don’t know what they said, but apparently they didn’t communicate well because they immediately ran into the same issue when Rowley resumed questioning.
“Did you want to bring it up to him to review it?” Tavelman said.
“No, it’s straight impeachment,” Rowley said.
“I said he didn’t remember. So you can re-ask the question if you’d like,” Tavelman said.
“Okay. When you told Officer Jones to sling that, that was because you were going to have him and [Officer] Suarez be your arrest team, correct?” Rowley asked.
“To the best of my recollection, I believe so with that current assessment time, sir,” Mazur answered.
Mazur had told Officer Jordan Head to use his “40,” referring to a 40 mm less-than lethal weapon, on the assailant before Jones fired his AR-15.
“And you believe when this happened and these shots were fired, you believe that this situation was, in your words, ‘fucked up’, yes?” Rowley asked, referring to a comment from Mazur that is audible y on the body-worn camera footage but has not been played for the jury.
Bojorquez began cross-examining Mazur on Thursday and will continue when the trial resumes next Tuesday, April 21.
Officer Jones testified last week and on Monday. Rowley’s co-counsel Haytham Faraj questioned Jones about Mazur’s “sling it,” and Jones said he heard it.
“As soon as he says ‘sling that’ you see me put the weapon over my head and put it in that sling-carry position,” Jones said.
“I hear him say ‘sling it’, and I’m the only person with the weapon that is slingable. Everyone else has firearms. [Officer] Escobar has his shotgun. I wasn’t in the sling at the time,” Jones said.
The testimony doesn’t match what Jones said in his deposition. Faraj played a portion after asking Jones about his oath to tell the truth.
In the video, a lawyer asks Jones, “Did you ever hear Officer [Michael Mazur] tell you to 'sling that' with regard to the AR-15?” and Jones answered, “No, I believe he was speaking about the less-lethal option.”
“Now in that deposition, sir, when you were asked, ‘Do you remember Officer Mazur telling you to sling that?’ you said, ‘No, it was about the less lethal,’?” Faraj asked.
“That’s what I thought at the time,” Jones answered.
“Here in court, your testimony is, ‘Yeah, it was for positive weapons retention,’” Faraj said.
“That’s correct. It goes both ways, whether it’s officers slinging a less-lethal option, whether it’s me slinging my rifle,” Jones said.
“So when I hear that statement being made, I climb in my sling automatically, whether he’s talking to me or whether he’s telling someone else. It’s almost like if you get a verbal key or verbal cue. He could be talking to ‘Hey, everyone with Escobar. You have your shotgun. Officer Head, you have ... the 40 millimeter launcher. Hey, sling that, sling that.’ We all have slings. We’re gonna climb in our slings,” Jones continued.
“Sir, he looked right at you and said, ‘Sling, sling that.’ You recall that?” Faraj said.
“I don’t know where he’s exactly looking at. To me, it looks like he’s looking north down in the store to where they think the threat may be,” Jones said.
Faraj also asked Jones how he felt “in this moment as you’re getting out and getting the patrol rifle out of the car.”
“I’m trying to take in the environment. I’m trying to — There’s people to my left side, and they’re kind of talking, and I kind of hear them give descriptions of possible descriptions of suspects. I’m just trying to make sure that I get my weapon system up and running and get in that location as fast as I can,” Jones answered.
“Are you excited to be using your firearm in a real situation for the first time?” Faraj asked.
“Absolutely not. That’s the last thing I want to do, have to do. But that’s my job. When I took this oath in the department, it’s to have reverence for life. That’s everybody’s life. So if someone’s in there shooting, and we have a mass shooting two days before Christmas, then I’ve got to do what I was sworn to do,” Jones said.
A use-of-force expert also testified this week. Judge Tavelman said he expected Richard Bryce’s testimony to take four hours, but Bryce’s testimony stretched over 2 1/2 days, the last day remotely so he didn’t miss his already rescheduled flight home.
Tavelman allowed jurors to submit questions for Bryce, a former undersheriff in Ventura County.
The judge reviewed the questions in chambers with the attorneys before telling jurors he wouldn’t ask some questions because he deemed them legally improper, couldn’t understand what they’re asking “or it may be that it’s going to come out later in the trial.”
“It’s not because the lawyers don’t want them asked. They’d love all of your questions, hopes, dreams, aspirations to be answered by this trial. I’m the one who has to say no,” Tavelman said.
The first question was, “Would a gun pointed at an officer be considered an exigent danger?”
“It could be. It would depend on the circumstances,” Bryce answered.
The second question was, “In reviewing the clip by clip, how did you make an opinion if it’s hindsight, rather than viewing the officer’s eyes at the time?”
“I base that on in viewing it clip by clip, what a reasonable officer could have done rather than shoot [the assault suspect], or in this case, the young woman in the dressing room, all of those things came into play, the fact that he didn't adequately assess the backdrop, which is required,” Bryce answered.
The judge told him the question was “a little bit broader.”
“Well, that’s a little bit broader than the question. So the question was simply, ‘How are you determining if something is 20/20 hindsight or from the officer’s perspective at the time it’s happening?’ That was the limited question,” Tavelman said.
Bryce said he considered Jones’ investigative interview and deposition. Tavelman interjected: “Well, hold on, sir. So you did it based upon your review of the deposition and other statements that were made. That’s how you made the conclusion?”
“That was one of two of the things I used. Yes, Your Honor,” Bryce said.
“And what else did you utilize to make that determination?” Tavelman asked.
“The training that he’d received, the evidence that was available to him prior to shooting and the direction that he’d been given by Officer Mazur about not using his weapon,” Bryce answered.
The third and final question was, “In your professional opinion, what was the right course of action in this situation, for the entire diamond formation of officers and Officer Jones?”
“The diamond formation should have continued to proceed at a reasonable pace down the aisle to assess backdrops and attempt to locate the location of the suspect,” Bryce answered.
I have more videos of Bryce’s testimony to upload on my YouTube channel and Facebook page, and more clips to share on Instagram and TikTok.
I’ll be back in court recording when the trial resumes on Tuesday. Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff is officially an S-Corp now, and one goal is to expand video coverage of trials in Los Angeles and Orange County.
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