Lawyer Calls Shooting by Police an Outrage : Law enforcement: Woman who was killed after allegedly threatening officers was hit in the back by seven bullets, coroner says. Her family’s attorney demands an explanation.

A young woman who died in a fusillade of Los Angeles police gunfire in December after allegedly threatening officers with a butcher knife was hit in the back by seven of the bullets, according to a coroner’s report.

The autopsy also indicates that Sonji Danese Taylor, 27, was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of her death on a hospital rooftop, although police reported that she had been acting strangely and that they feared for the life of her 3-year-old son.

A spokesman for the Police Department said that the findings of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, which were released Monday, came as no surprise and that a departmental investigation has been under way since shortly after the shooting.

“The reaction is that there is certainly nothing there that we didn’t expect,” said Lt. John Dunkin. “It will become part and parcel of the investigation, which will ultimately be submitted to the chief of police.”

But attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who represents Taylor’s family, compared the shooting to the Eulia Love case of 1979, in which a black woman who wielded a knife was shot to death by LAPD officers. Taylor was black and the two officers who shot her--Sgt. Michael Long and Officer Craig Liedahl--are white.

“This is worse” than the Love case, Cochran said. “She (Love) was facing the officers.

“I think this is an outrageous shooting that cries out for some immediate explanation, and so far we haven’t gotten anything,” he continued. “It would be very hard for me to believe that in Los Angeles in 1994 that two white officers would shoot a white woman seven times.”

Dunkin denied that race was a factor in the shooting.

“That is not an issue,” he said. “I know the policemen involved.”

Dunkin did not know when the department’s investigation, which examines whether the two officers acted in accordance with LAPD policy on shootings, will be completed. Such investigations are done after all officer-involved shootings.

The district attorney’s office also is investigating, which is also routine. Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for that office, refused to comment on the investigation but said she hoped it would be concluded soon.

“The coroner’s report will obviously assist us,” she said.

Taylor, who lived in El Monte, was killed Dec. 16. Security officers at St. Vincent Medical Center called police when they discovered the woman on the facility’s helipad.

Taylor was holding a butcher knife in her left hand and her young son in her right hand while she shouted “For the blood of Jesus!” security officers told police.

Long, an 18-year LAPD veteran, and Liedahl, a 15-year veteran, answered the call and attempted to persuade Taylor to release the child, according to police. When Taylor refused, an officer doused her with pepper spray in an attempt to subdue her, police said.

Taylor then released the child and advanced on the officers, waving the knife “in a threatening manner,” police said. When Taylor ignored their commands to drop the knife, the two officers fired nine rounds, police said.

The autopsy report indicates that Taylor suffered 10 gunshot wounds: one to the abdomen, one to the left hand, one to the left forearm and seven to the back. It is unclear whether the bullet that passed through Taylor’s hand caused another wound.

Shortly after the incident, Taylor’s mother, Geri Dixon, also of El Monte, said she did not believe the police version of the shooting.

Dixon said her daughter loved her son too much to threaten him.

It is unclear why Taylor was at St. Vincent Medical Center, but she apparently had been Christmas shopping that day. Shoppers sometimes park at the center while in nearby stores.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.