FBI Enters Compton Shooting Case : Investigation: The bureau will evaluate the gunshot deaths of two Samoan brothers, based on allegations of a civil rights violation.

The FBI has launched an investigation into the shooting deaths of two unarmed Samoan brothers by a Compton police officer, officials announced.

The federal agency began the investigation last Tuesday, the same day that more than 400 protesters marched around the Compton police station and City Hall, demanding a criminal investigation of the month-old incident.

The Feb. 12 shooting deaths of Pouvi Tualaulelei, 34, and his brother, Italia Tualaulelei, 22, are also being investigated by the Compton Police Department and the Special Investigations Division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. An autopsy report shows that the two dead men sustained 20 bullet wounds, mostly to their backs.

Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton) announced last Tuesday that he had asked the FBI to investigate the shooting deaths. But FBI spokesman Fred C. Reagan declined to say Thursday who was responsible for the bureau’s decision to enter the case. The FBI, he said, is investigating because there is an allegation that the shootings may have involved a civil rights violation.

Members of the Samoan community insist that the shootings represent yet another instance of police brutality and discrimination against them.

The Feb. 12 incident involved Officer Alfred Skiles, a veteran of about 12 years on the Compton police force, who was responding to a reported domestic dispute. The elder brother’s wife, Julie, had called Compton police and reported that her husband had beaten her and driven off with the couple’s two sons, ages 7 and 5.

While Skiles was outside the house, the husband, Pouvi Tualaulelei, returned, and his younger brother, Italia, a football player and scholarship student at El Camino College, came out of the house, police and residents said.

But what happened after that is in dispute. Compton police say Skiles told them that the two brothers attacked him and tried to take his gun away. Members of the Tualaulelei family say that the two brothers were complying with the officer’s order to kneel down when Skiles opened fire.

Skiles has been assigned to a desk job, pending the outcome of the investigations.

Compton Police Chief Terry Ebert said he welcomed the FBI investigation, adding that his department was “cooperating fully with the FBI.”