LONG BEACH : Man Who Shot Officer Is Sentenced to Life
A man convicted of attempted murder in the 1993 shooting of a city police officer has been sentenced to life in prison.
Nathan Sims, 21, was given an additional eight years for shooting into an occupied vehicle and for leaving Officer Abel Dominguez with serious injuries, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Barbara Turner said.
“The Dominguez family was there,” Turner said. “They were very pleased that he got a life sentence and that it’s over.”
Sims may be eligible for parole in 10 years.
Dominguez, 31, was shot three times by Sims--once in the head--during a routine traffic stop last August in Long Beach.
Sims and another man who was in the car, 19-year-old Cashus Ward, pleaded innocent to charges of attempted murder and lynching. On Aug. 3, a Superior Court jury convicted Sims of attempted murder.
The unusual charge of lynching was filed on grounds the two men tried to take somebody from police custody, which is the legal definition of lynching. Ward was found guilty of releasing a friend from the back of Dominguez’s patrol car. He was sentenced recently to four years in prison.
Dominguez is paralyzed on the left side of his body and must use a brace and a cane to walk. He may never regain complete vision in his left eye.
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