Andres Guardado’s parents hoped that a rare investigation into his 18-year-old son’s fatal shooting involving two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies would bring clarity to the circumstances that led to the young man’s murder seven months ago.
But the first inquiry that Los Angeles County saw in more than 30 years barely revealed any new information. Former Court of Appeals judge Candace Cooper, who conducted the investigation at the request of Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jonathan Lucas, on November 30, maintained an earlier office conclusion that Guardado’s death it was a homicide, officials said on Friday.
Cristobal and Elisa Guardado, the parents of the young man, said in a statement that “Judge Cooper confirmed what we knew all along.” Cooper concluded that Guardado died on June 18 in a driveway on Redondo Beach Boulevard in Gardena, California. The medical cause of his death was several gunshot wounds and the form of death was “at the hands of someone other than an accident,” Cooper wrote in his findings.
Cooper said he based his findings on the testimonies of medical experts, investigators and witnesses to the shooting, as well as on secret records from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which have not been made public. However, several members of the sheriff’s department, including the two deputies involved in the Guardado murder, refused to answer questions during the November 30 investigation.
Deputy Miguel Vega, who opened fire, did not attend the process. But he filed a statement “indicating that if he appeared and was questioned in the investigation, he would assert his Fifth Amendment right not to testify,” Cooper wrote in the investigation’s conclusions. Rep. Chris Hernandez, who did not shoot, as well as two homicide detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who were assigned to investigate Guardado’s death repeatedly refused to answer questions, saying that, on the attorney’s advice, they were invoking its Fifth Amendment rights. Reporting by NBC Los Angeles.
Cooper said he had enough evidence to complete the investigation without calling for more witnesses or requesting more evidence, consequently deciding that she “will not proceed with the Fifth Amendment issues raised during the investigation”.
Cooper’s decision to end the investigation without further disclosure essentially means that the sheriff’s department’s previous report on Guardado’s death, which sparked protests over the summer, will remain the official version unless the case is reviewed during a trial.
Guardado was shot five times in the back while working as a security guard at a body shop in Gardena last summer. The deputies involved in the murder, Vega and Hernandez, reportedly saw the 18-year-old with a gun on the day of the shooting. Guardado then fled, and police chased him to an alley in the back of a building where he was killed, Captain Kent Wegener, head of the Homicide Department, told a news conference in June. While a 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol was found at the scene, which had not been fired, the authorities do not clarify whether Guardado has already pointed the gun at the deputies.
Investigators said there was no video of the shooting because deputies did not have body cameras; they said a program to supply the cameras had been stalled for years. They also said that deputies were unable to find the video of the shooting at neighboring companies.
The decision to indict the deputies involved in Guardado’s death will rest on the shoulders of the newly elected public prosecutor George Gascón.
Cristobal and Elisa Guardado, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Los Angeles County and its sheriff’s department two months before the investigation, are now asking Gascón to “do what the sheriff’s department did not do, which is to take action and hold these deputies responsible for their criminal actions. “
“Andrés was a good person with all his life ahead of him. This life was violently taken from him, and we suffered the consequences because his killers are still free. Our family will not rest until we have justice for Andrés,” added Guardado’s parents.
