Police Clash May Cost Woman an Eye

A 38-year-old mother of four is expected to lose her eye after an officer from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division shot her three times with a beanbag shotgun early Monday because he mistakenly thought the woman was reaching for a weapon hidden in her jacket.

Annette Amoroso of Westlake Village said in an interview from her hospital room Thursday that officers ordered her to the ground as they investigated a report that the sport utility vehicle in which she was a passenger was stolen.

“I was on my knees, with my hands up, and my back to them,” said Amoroso, who is expected to have her right eye removed today. “First, they shot me in the shoulder. As I started to turn around, they shot me in the eye.”

LAPD Capt. Michel Moore, commanding officer of the Rampart Division, said a preliminary investigation had led him to believe that Officer Craig Marquez opened fire on Amoroso after she was uncooperative during the investigation and reached into her jacket.

“It’s very regrettable the type of injury she sustained,” Moore said.

Moore said Marquez, a five-year LAPD veteran, interpreted the movement as a threat to his safety and that of his partners. Moore added that Amoroso swore at the officers and resisted their commands to lie prone on the pavement at a gas station at Vermont Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard.

Moore said police investigators interviewed civilian witnesses, including occupants of the car, who agreed that Amoroso was uncooperative. One witness, he said, supported the officers’ contention that she reached inside her jacket.

The captain said the sequence of the shots fired from the beanbag shotgun, and the justification for each of the three shots, remained under investigation. Moore said police believe Amoroso was hit once while she was still standing, allegedly because Marquez felt she might try to enter the gas station mini-mart where she could have posed a risk to customers. Another shot, Moore said, was fired while she was on her knees and turning to face officers. That shot hit her in the eye. A third shot may have missed her entirely, Moore said.

Amoroso, who owns a beauty salon in Woodland Hills, agreed that she was reluctant to lie face-down on the pavement, saying she was dressed in a suede skirt that she did not want to ruin. She said she also had no idea that her friend’s car had been reported stolen and therefore did not understand why officers had their guns drawn and were shouting orders at her.

She denied, however, that she made any type of “movement.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, adding that her attire would have afforded her no place to hide a weapon in the first place.

She said she was dressed in a miniskirt and tight-fitting sweater for a night out at the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard, where some friends were playing in the band featured at the club that night.

“Where am I going to hide something?” she said.

Amoroso said that after prying the cloth beanbag from her eye socket, she lay in a pool of blood, moaning, “I’m dying, I’m dying,” for 20 minutes as officers looked on. She was later arrested on suspicion of interfering with an investigation.

Kevin Patrick, the presumed owner of the vehicle in which Amoroso was riding, said the car was reported stolen by his wife because they had been fighting and he had failed to pick her up at the airport as he had promised. The car was registered in her name, he said.

“I assume she didn’t tell the cops we were married when she made the report,” said Patrick, 31, of Agoura Hills.

Patrick said he, Amoroso and two other friends had just pulled into a gas station early Monday morning to buy some bottled water when about half a dozen police cars pulled up behind them, lights flashing. He said numerous officers with their guns drawn ordered him and Amoroso, the only two who had gotten out of the car, to the ground.

“Next thing I know, Annette’s on the deck, covered in blood,” Patrick said. “I’m screaming, ‘. . . . You shot her in the face! Get her an ambulance! Somebody get her an ambulance!’ ”

Patrick, who was arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto, denied that Amoroso made any threatening movements.

So did Megan Weddle, 34, another friend of Amoroso who was also a passenger in the vehicle.

Weddle, a small-business owner from Agoura Hills, said she was interviewed by an LAPD investigator within hours after the incident.

“I said she had her hands up and she was unarmed.”

Weddle said she was shocked by how quickly the police shot at her friend. “I’ve never been around police or things like this,” she said. “I was going by what I’d seen in the movies, you know, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ Well, they never did that.”

Attorney Alan Katz, who was hired by Amoroso’s father, said use of force was clearly not justified.

“Even if Annette Amoroso was a convicted killer, the police conduct was reprehensible,” Katz said. Officer Marquez could not be reached for comment.

According to police documents, Marquez, 27, has had one complaint against him sustained. That stemmed from a Sept. 25, 1997, traffic stop in which Marquez was accused of using “unauthorized tactics when [he] unnecessarily pointed [his] firearm” at a motorist’s head.

Moore said that the officer’s history will be taken into account as the department evaluates the incident with Amoroso.