Former gangbanger turned lawyer is suing the City of Santa Ana for shooting a suspect in the back

The family of an unarmed 18-year-old shot and killed while running from gang officers has hired Humberto Guizar, a former gangbanger turned lawyer, to represent them in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Santa Ana, according to the O.C. Register.

Guizar won $3.2 million for the survivors of a Ramona Gardens man who died after an altercation with LAPD officers back in 2012, according to the L.A. Times. 

If Guizar wins this case in Santa Ana then the taxpayers will likely be forking over millions to the Salgado family.

The Salgado incident happened on Jan. 29, at around 4:40 p.m., at the 400 block of South Birch St., in Santa Ana, when SAPD Police Detective David Prewett and five other SAPD police officers were patrolling the neighborhood when the saw an occupied vehicle parked in the middle of an alley, effectively blocking street traffic.

For some reason Salgado ran off after he got out of the front passenger seat of that vehicle. Prewett chased him on foot but the other officers drove after him.

Det. Tyler Salo, one of the police officers, told the OCDA investigators that Salgado had his hand on an item in the right front pocket of his shorts, while he was running away. Salo then radioed the other police officers and warned them that Salgado might be armed.

Salo reportedly yelled at Salgado, “Stop. Police.”

Prewett then ordered Salgado to “Drop the gun.”

Salgado looked back at the police officers, as he continued to run away, and Prewett then shot him three times.

A nearby home’s security camera caught part of the chase, according to the OCDA. While the footage was not of great quality it appeared to show Salgado holding something in his pocket as he ran – and he kept looking behind him and may have pulled something out of his pocket and thrown it.

But the SAPD did not find a weapon after the shooting.

What the police did find however was two cell phones, a bindle with “white crystalline powder” and a glass pipe. The OCDA did not verify if the substance was tested or if they determined it was Salgado’s but a blood test they ran on his corpse determined that he had meth in his system. They never did determine if the phones were his either.

For some reason Prewett refused to give a statement to the OCDA investigators after he shot Salgado. So the investigators were unable to verify if his state of mind at the time of the shooting was clear.

But two other police officers did give statements and they said they had drawn their guns and had been ready to use deadly force against Salgado.

The fatal shooting happened near an apartment complex where families and children were present. The police officers said that Salgado appeared to be a gang member and he ran away from them in an area that one of Santa Ana’s most active street gangs is based in.

The report also concluded that Salgado was in fact a documented gang member.

We don’t like it when young people die needlessly but the facts are the facts. Salgado was told to stand down and he chose to run from the cops instead. While he did not have a gun he did have drugs on him so he certainly was not up to anything good. Was it overkill to shoot him in the back? Probably. But police officers are trained to kill, not maim. If suspects opt to run then they are effectively committing suicide by cop. Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for that?