Jury Debating If 2 Officers Are at Fault in Fatal ’81 Shooting

A jury Friday began deliberations in a wrongful-death lawsuit against two Los Angeles traffic officers accused of negligence in the 1981 shooting of a man they said reached for a shotgun when they awakened him in his car.

The attorney for the slain man’s father, who filed the suit against the city and the officers, asked the Van Nuys Superior Court jury to award $200,000 to David A. Lally, 65, for loss of his son’s companionship and support.

Lally could not ask for punitive damages or an award for emotional pain and suffering because neither is allowed in a wrongful-death suit.

In closing arguments this week, attorney Carol A. Watson contended that the officers rushed into a situation they were not qualified to handle and displayed negligence in failing to form a plan to get the shotgun out of the car before waking the victim, David P. Lally. The shotgun was unloaded.

“At seven minutes after 12, the officers are still rolling to the scene,” Watson told the jury Friday morning. “At nine minutes after 12, the shooting has been over for 30 seconds. Now that’s fast.”

However, Assistant City Atty. Philip J. Sugar, who defended the officers and the city, said during his closing arguments that the officers “followed a textbook tactical deployment” toward the car and had no choice but to shoot the man when he raised the shotgun.

During a weeklong trial before Judge Joel Rudof, Officers Richard Haberland and Byron Travis gave the only eyewitness testimony about the shooting.

A man who called police to report seeing Lally walking down the street with a dog, a gas can and a shotgun testified that he was too far away to see what happened when the officers approached the 1950s Ford Fairlane to which Lally had returned at Gaviota Avenue and Nordhoff Street in Sepulveda.

Tapped Victim on Foot

The officers said they separated to approach the car from both sides, saw the shotgun on the rear seat, attempted to wake Lally by shouting and eventually opened the driver’s door and tapped him on the foot with a flashlight.

The startled Lally awoke, then sat up, reached across the seat, grabbed the handgrip of his shotgun and raised it with the barrel pointed in Travis’ direction, they said.

Haberland testified that he thought his partner was going to be shot and, reaching inside the passenger window, shot Lally once in the back of the head.

The senior Lally testified that his son, an outdoorsman, borrowed the father’s shotgun four days earlier for a hunting trip.

Watson speculated that the younger Lally, who had been living with his father in Highland Park, ran out of gas on the way home from the trip.

In closing arguments, Watson accused the officers of a cover-up, suggesting that Lally never raised the shotgun. She argued that he would not have put the shotgun in view on the back seat because the rear window of the car was missing and a thief could have taken it.

Watson speculated that the weapon was either hidden or in the trunk.

She said: “They went up to the car. They yanked open the door. The dog jumped out. David Lally sat up. They shot him.”

Officers Out of ‘Milieu’

Instead, Watson suggested, as traffic officers, the two men were out of their “milieu,” and should have waited for a standard patrol unit. One arrived less than a minute after the shooting.

“They had an obligation to stand by and maintain the situation in a static condition,” Watson said.

Sugar said Lally was wholly at fault for what happened because of his behavior.

“Even if there were other officers there, this incident would have happened exactly the way it did,” he said.

He said officers do not need a plan to approach a car, something they do many times a day, and ridiculed the notion of a cover-up, suggesting that, if the officers intended to deceive, they would have loaded the shotgun with shells that were scattered about the car.

The jury deliberated for about three hours Friday, and will continue Monday morning.