Police Fired First Shots, Wounded Robber Testifies

Contradicting the testimony of five Los Angeles police officers, an armed robber charged with murder testified Tuesday that a team of undercover officers fired the first rounds during a gunfight last year that left him paralyzed and his partner dead.

Testifying in his own defense, Robert Wayne Cunningham admitted to a Ventura County jury that he robbed a Newbury Park liquor store and deli last year.

But he denied beginning a gun battle with members of a controversial Los Angeles Police Department surveillance team that followed the pair to Ventura County and watched them commit the crime.

Speaking in a soft voice from his wheelchair, Cunningham, a 27-year-old Reseda resident, described how he and his 26-year-old partner were repeatedly fired upon while sitting in a car after the robbery.

Although he said he later learned that 13 police officers were firing the shots, Cunningham testified that he never heard anyone identify themselves as a police officer.

Cunningham also told the jury that at the end of the gunfight, after he had been struck in the back and his partner badly wounded by shotgun blasts, an officer walked up to the car and fired an execution-style shot into his partner’s head.

“I saw somebody put a .45 to his head,” Cunningham testified. “I closed my eyes. I thought the next one was for me.”

Cunningham’s statements contradict the testimony of several LAPD officers, who recently testified that Cunningham and his accomplice, Daniel Soly, initially fired at them.

The officers, all members of the department’s Special Investigations Section, said that Cunningham popped out of the sunroof of Soly’s white Toyota Celica and began firing his pistol, instigating the gunfight.

The 19-member Special Investigations Section has drawn criticism for following violent criminals but not arresting them until after they have committed robberies, burglaries or other crimes, frequently leaving victims terrorized or injured.

Cunningham is on trial for murder and robbery for his role in the June 26, 1995, shooting. Prosecutors have argued that he should be held responsible for his partner’s death on the grounds that he provoked the gunfight.

But defense attorneys in the unusual case have argued that the true killer is not Cunningham, but the LAPD’s controversial special investigations team.

“They wanted to be in a place to see a robbery and thus be placed in a position where they could execute,” Deputy Public Defender Gary Windom said in his opening statement.

Windom and his defense team opened their case this week, calling Cunningham as one of their first witnesses.

Wearing a gray suit, Cunningham slowly recounted the events leading up to the confrontation with the officers.

He said he spent the day at Soly’s West Hills house, working on a car that he desperately needed more money to repair. At Soly’s suggestion, they agreed to steal lawn mowers to get the money.

But later that evening, as they drove to Ventura County, Soly suggested an alternate plan--robbing a liquor store.

“I told him I didn’t need that much money,” Cunningham testified. “I didn’t want to do it because it was bigger than stealing lawn mowers.”

But he reluctantly agreed, he said, “because I needed the money.”

Cunningham and Soly got off the Ventura Freeway at Wendy Drive in Newbury Park, and went to South West Liquor and Deli, which in now closed. Cunningham tucked Soly’s .38-caliber pistol in his waistband and took a bandanna that he said he always carried as a handkerchief and used it as a mask.

Unaware that special investigations officers in eight unmarked cars were watching, the pair took $2,300 from the store and several cartons of cigarettes.

After Cunningham got back into the car, the vehicle was suddenly rear-ended by police, he said, and moments later he heard gunshots. After about three rounds of gunfire, he said, he raised his arm and pointed his pistol out the sunroof and returned fire.

“I wanted them to stop,” Cunningham testified.

Contrary to the accounts of the LAPD officers, Cunningham said he never stood up through the open sunroof and he denied firing the initial shots.

LAPD officials on Tuesday declined to comment on the case and Cunningham’s statements because of pending litigation.

Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman filed two class-action lawsuits this month arguing that the LAPD’s Special Investigations Section watches suspects commit crimes and then “executes” them. One of the lawsuits details the Cunningham case.

The team has come under fire in the past for its tactics, and was the subject of several similar lawsuits in the 1980s.