Two former Los Angeles-area police detectives have been charged with shooting an unarmed man in 2020 and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, the district attorney said Wednesday.
Former Whittier Detectives Cynthia Lopez and Salvador Murillo opened fire on April 30, 2020, as Nicholas Carrillo was running from them. Two bullets hit him in the back, one severed his spinal cord, as he climbed a fence to escape.
“Although he was lucky to survive, his life has changed forever and he now has to start using a wheelchair,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said at a press conference. Wednesday.
Murillo is charged with two counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm and two counts of assault under the guise of authority. Lopez faces two counts of assault on the pretense of authority, one count of shooting at an occupied vehicle and one count of assault with a semi-automatic firearm. Prosecutors filed the charges on Tuesday.
Detectives were in civilian clothes and in an unmarked car when they saw a sedan allegedly used in a bare-knuckle robbery the previous month, Gascón said. A woman was the suspect in this robbery at a Walmart, where they stole a television. Carrillo was alone in the car the day he was shot.
Detectives followed the sedan down an alley and exited their vehicle, guns drawn. The sedan reversed and collided with the detectives’ car, Gascón said.
The family of a man apparently shot by San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department officers will file a lawsuit against the department and two other law enforcement agencies involved in the incident.
Lopez fired into the rear windshield of the sedan, prosecutors said. Carrillo ran out of the car and López and Murillo opened fire as they pursued. He was unarmed.
They should be processed on Monday. It was not immediately clear if they had attorneys who could speak on their behalf.
The Whittier Police Officers Association, the union representing rank-and-file officers in the department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The detectives are no longer employed by the Whittier Police Department, which also did not respond to a request for comment. Whittier is about 15 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Whittier’s case comes two weeks after Gascón’s office charged seven California Highway Patrol officers and a nurse with manslaughter in the 2020 death of a man who shouted “I can’t breathe” as several Officers restrained him as they attempted to take a blood sample.