Family of Police Shooting Victim Files Civil Suit : Courts: Los Alamitos man’s widow and mother, charging brutality, seek $20 million in damages.

The family of a 40-year-old truck driver, shot to death Jan. 23 after police responded to a call about a domestic disturbance at his apartment, filed a $20-million civil rights suit Friday against city officials, charging that they “fostered a custom of police brutality.”

The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, said ex-Marine Sylvan Randall Byrd was fatally wounded after he came to his front door with a handgun “behind his back.”

Brought by Byrd’s widow, Ellen, and his mother, Vivien Harkness, the suit seeks $10 million in general damages, $10 million in punitive damages, plus attorney fees and court costs. The family members claim that their Fourth Amendment rights to be secure “in home, person and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures” were violated.

The officers used unreasonable force in “shooting Byrd to death” and in “striking and beating” his wife, the suit alleged, adding that the acts are part of a “simple, non-racially based conspiracy.”

According to unnamed witnesses cited by the Byrd family attorney, Stephen Yagman, the police officers who came to the door of the apartment did not announce themselves as such.

Other accounts of the circumstances leading up to the shooting, as well as the shooting itself, vary sharply from the one outlined in the suit.

Los Alamitos police and at least one Byrd neighbor said that police identified themselves several times before the shooting began and that Byrd refused to give up his weapon.

In a written statement released to the media, Yagman said the Byrd family “has charged that the city, its mayor and council members have fostered a custom of police brutality by Los Alamitos police.”

The lawyer’s release also said “it is reported that one of the officers (involved in the shooting), whose names police refuse to release, has a history of violent behavior and a short temper.”

Yagman also said the city has on retainer Santa Ana attorney Bruce D. Praet “to defend it in the relatively numerous police brutality cases brought against its small Police Department.”

Praet said in an interview that he would not comment on the suit, which he said he had not seen.

However, he did respond to the press release, saying: “It is interesting that Yagman can make statements like this so soon. . . . How can he make such allegations? He knows nothing about Los Alamitos. I don’t think we have any other brutality cases pending. . . . If this one allegation by Mr. Yagman constitutes ‘relatively numerous complaints,’ I find that very interesting.”

Also interesting, Praet said, is that “Mr. Yagman says that one of the officers has a history of violent behavior, when he doesn’t know who they are.”

In order to determine the circumstances of the shooting, Praet said, “we enlisted an outside agency, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, to conduct an independent investigation, and we’re not going to draw any conclusions before the district attorney has evaluated the evidence.”