Family Questions Police Slaying of Teen

The family of Felix Valenzuela, a 16-year-old Pacoima teenager shot and killed in a weekend confrontation with police, angrily questioned Monday why two Los Angeles patrol officers couldn’t have used nonlethal weapons to subdue the naked and bloodied teenager.

A Los Angeles Police Department officer fatally shot Valenzuela early Saturday after he allegedly charged her and tried to grab her holstered gun, authorities said.

But Valenzuela wasn’t armed, and his family called upon police to release more information about the shooting--and about why officers felt so threatened that they needed to shoot and kill him. Valenzuela stood about 5-foot-6 or 5-foot-7, family members said.

“This was a big injustice,” said Humberto Valenzuela, Felix’s 16-year-old cousin and best friend. “There was no need for [police] to use their guns. They could’ve taken care of this in a lot of other ways” such as with pepper spray or other nonlethal weapons.

Felix Valenzuela’s 23-year-old brother, Ezequiel Valenzuela, said: “What’s a naked guy gonna do to you? You can clearly see he didn’t have any weapons.”

According to a police statement, Valenzuela was naked, covered with blood and “acting in a bizarre manner” in a nearly deserted intersection when two officers arrived on the scene at 4:26 a.m. Saturday.

Valenzuela, according to the police statement, immediately fixated on Officer Karen Thiffault, “screaming unintelligibly” as she tried to calm him. Valenzuela “immediately charged” Thiffault and, as she tried to get away, he “repeatedly reached for and on at least one occasion grabbed” her holstered service revolver.

In fear for her life, the statement said, Thiffault shot Valenzuela, killing him. It also said she believed “the suspect might be under the influence of PCP.”

On Monday, officials said they couldn’t comment in detail on the shooting because the case is being investigated.

“But they haven’t said anything else” to us, said Valenzuela’s older sister, Florencia Valenzuela, 23. “I feel they owe us an explanation.”

Some details of the shooting did, however, emerge Monday.

The blood covering Valenzuela’s body appeared to be from cuts, probably from his scaling a nearby fence with razor wire, said LAPD spokesman Cmdr. David Kalish.

Coroner spokesman Scott Carrier said Valenzuela had so many cuts that it was difficult to tell how many times he had been shot. But police confirmed Monday that Thiffault fired three rounds at him.

Carrier said the coroner’s office would defer making a determination on the probable cause of death until toxicological test results are obtained. That could take four to six weeks.

Meanwhile, police detectives have begun interviewing several witnesses to the shooting, including two firefighters who responded to a call about a man under the influence and found Valenzuela standing in the middle of the road at San Fernando Road and Van Nuys Boulevard. Police also have several civilian witnesses, Kalish said.

At 38, Thiffault is a veteran patrol officer with 12 years on the force. On the morning of the shooting, she was acting as a training officer for her partner, Daniel Palma, a rookie who had been out of the LAPD’s training academy for four months, Kalish said.

The police account raises questions about Thiffault and Palma’s activities, according to one use-of-force expert who reviewed the police statement describing the shooting.

“If he’s naked, you can tell he’s unarmed,” said former police chief and training consultant D.P. Van Blaricom. “If you want to stop him, whack him with a baton; that’s what the baton is for. . . . They will go down immediately. I don’t care if they’re on PCP or not.”

Van Blaricom cautioned that it is premature to criticize police too harshly for their actions.

Valenzuela was acting irrationally, as was obvious by his naked state and his yelling unintelligibly, Van Blaricom said. Police should have taken extraordinary efforts to maintain a distance from him, to call for backup officers who might have beanbag shotguns and stun guns, and to make sure they had their own nonlethal weapons ready.

The Times reported earlier this month that police have shot and killed 25 people since 1994 who were acting irrationally from mental illness or adverse reactions to drugs.

Poor tactics and mistakes played a role in pushing a dozen of those shootings to their fatal conclusions, The Times reported.

Kalish said it was unfair to assess what happened in the moments before the fatal shooting.

He said Valenzuela charged so quickly that it “severely limited” the officers’ options to immobilize Valenzuela without shooting him.

On Monday, tearful and angry family members gathered at the home where Valenzuela lived.

In many ways, they said, he was just a regular kid.

The youngest of four children of a construction worker and sewing machine operator, Valenzuela was born in Durango, Mexico, and emigrated to the United States with his parents, two older brothers and an older sister when he was 2 1/2.

The family moved to the Arleta-Pacoima area in 1988, family members said.

Valenzuela’s family says he held an after-school and weekend job at Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park in Santa Clarita.

He had his own bank account, and used the money he earned on his many pets, which included a python, a rabbit and several pigeons.

“He loved animals,” Florencia Valenzuela said. He also liked girls and was trying to lose weight, family members said.

But Valenzuela “fell in with the wrong crowd,” Florencia tearfully added. A few months ago, he was forced to transfer from San Fernando High School to Monroe High School when he was caught with a small amount of marijuana.

About midnight Friday--just hours before the shooting--Valenzuela called home to say that he was spending the night with friends.

On Saturday, his family assumed that he was at work and they didn’t become concerned about him until late that night when they hadn’t heard from him, his sister said.

On Sunday morning his mother, Manuela, and brother Ezequiel went to the police to file a missing person’s report. Later that day his father, Felix Valenzuela Soto, identified him from a photograph at the coroner’s office.

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo contributed to this story.