Deputy’s Shot Hit Boy in Back of Neck

A Montebello youth who was shot by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy after allegedly running from a stolen car last month in Artesia suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the back of his neck, according to a coroner’s report released Monday.

However, the official autopsy report, which earlier had been ordered sealed, did not address contentions of the victim’s family attorney who said deputies could have saved the youth had they quickly summoned paramedics and not left the youth lying handcuffed and bleeding on the ground.

David Angel Ortiz Jr., 15, was shot Aug. 28 after deputies said they chased him in a high-speed pursuit that ended in a cul-de-sac near Pioneer Boulevard and the Artesia Freeway. Sheriff’s officials said Ortiz, who was driving the car, fled the scene and was shot by Deputy Jose Belmares when he appeared to be “reaching for his waistband.”

Ortiz was not armed, as it turned out, and some witnesses said the youth stopped running at the deputies’ commands but was shot when he did not turn around.

Several days after the shooting, the family attorney, Miguel F. Garcia, charged that Ortiz could have been saved had paramedics arrived at the scene more quickly. He said that instead of immediately summoning paramedics, the deputies handcuffed the dying youth as he lay bleeding on the ground.

Explaining that the teen-ager died from blood filling his lungs, Garcia said: “David Ortiz drowned in his own blood.”

The autopsy report released Monday noted that as the fatal bullet exited through the youth’s mouth, it caused massive bleeding in his mouth and that he breathed the blood into his lungs.

But the report offered no insight into how quickly the blood entered his lungs, or whether speedy life-saving techniques might have saved the youth’s life.

The Ortiz autopsy was one of four coroner’s reports that had been ordered sealed as county prosecutors continue to investigate the deaths of a series of men recently shot by sheriff’s deputies and West Covina police.

In one of those cases, the shooting last month of 33-year-old Keith Hamilton, the coroner determined that the victim was shot eight times in the back, and once in the top of the shoulder in a wound that tore sharply downward through his body.

On Monday, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said he will introduce a motion at today’s Tuesday’sboard meeting asking the county grand jury to investigate the Hamilton death.