LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Less than one week after a 14-year-old girl was shot and killed by police while shopping with her mother, several celebrities have stepped forward to cover the funeral expenses for her family.
Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shot and killed two days before Christmas, on Dec. 23, as she was trying on Christmas dresses with her mother in a North Hollywood Burlington Coat Factory.
That same day, a suspect armed with a bike and bike lock entered the store, attacking customers seemingly at random and prompting frantic phone calls to the Los Angeles Police Department about an armed suspect.
Body cam surveillance released by LAPD shows officers with guns drawn, entering the store and yelling “get out, get out,” to customers as they search for the suspect, now identified as Daniel Elena-Lopez.
The 24-year-old and a bleeding victim who he had allegedly beaten, were found in an aisle.
When he refused to stop, officers fired — with several rounds going past Elena-Lopez and through the walls behind him, where 14-year-old Orellana-Peralta and her mother were in the dressing room.
Since the teen’s death several celebrities in the Hispanic community have reached out to her family, the family’s lawyer Ben Crump told TMZ.
While he has not shared which celebrities have reached out, he did say that neither the city of L.A. nor the LAPD have made any offers to cover the funeral.
Crump has spoken out loudly about the officer-involved shooting since becoming the family’s lawyer. In an interview with CNN he said several experts have reviewed the body camera footage and want to know why officers weren’t more careful about using weapons in a store.
“Put yourself in the shoes of these parents, whose daughter ended up as collateral damage from the LAPD engaging with the suspect in this manner. Is it foreseeable that there would be shoppers in a shopping plaza two days before Christmas?” Crump said.
“I think everybody knows that there were going to be innocent people… so they should have taken every reasonable precaution to make sure that an innocent person like this 14 year old little angel Valentina wasn’t shot and killed two days before Christmas.”
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