Troubles Haunted Shooting Victim, 22

The 22-year-old man shot and killed over the weekend by La Habra police was deeply troubled and had a history of gang involvement, drug use and resisting arrest. But his family stood firm Monday in the belief he did not deserve to die.

Michael Duarte of Riverside was killed Sunday after a two-block police chase in La Habra ended in gunfire. Exactly what happened, though, remained unclear as La Habra police turned the investigation over to the Orange County district attorney’s office, where officials declined to provide details.

The investigation is being handled by the district attorney, which is the routine procedure for police shootings in La Habra, officials said. The officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave, also routine.

Gathered on the porch of the family matriarch several blocks from the shooting, relatives and friends expressed shock and anger over the circumstances surrounding his death.

“They didn’t need to kill him, just stop him,” said his mother, Terry Duarte, 48. “If my son was wrong, there was a way to handle this, but don’t shoot him and not give him a chance to put the gun down. These policemen, they are not gods.”

Authorities declined Monday to identify the two officers who fired their weapons, citing fears for the officers’ safety.

Police authorities also said they do not know why an officer approached Duarte on Sunday in a rear parking lot of a Bank of America branch. The officer was not called to the area but heard something that drew his attention, La Habra Police Capt. John Rees said.

“We don’t know what initiated the contact,” Rees said.

“Exactly what was going on is under investigation. We haven’t determined it yet.”

Police said Duarte was standing near the bank holding a shotgun. It was unclear why he suddenly fled the scene, leading officers on a two-block chase through backyards and alleys before he was shot several times in the 300 block of East 2nd Street.

They declined to say whether Duarte fired any shots because they had not completed forensic testing on the shotgun.

One witness said he saw two policemen fire as Duarte crouched behind a car.

“The second cop walked out in the middle of street as Michael was trying to get to his feet and shot him four or five times,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified because he said he feared police retaliation.

Duarte’s death marked the sixth time this year a suspect has been killed in Orange County by police. Unofficial tallies going back to 1996 count a high of 10 fatal officer-involved shootings in 1996 and a low of three in 2000.

Two of those cases occurred in La Habra, both in 1996.

In October, Antonio Miccio, 24, was killed by La Habra police after he shot at them as they arrived to search a house connected with an earlier murder.

In November, Michael Kunzweiler, 29, was killed by Anaheim police when, police said, he drove his car at them as they sought to question him at a La Habra gas station.

On Monday, relatives and friends set up a memorial of flowers, photos and candles on the sidewalk about 20 feet from where Duarte died.

They brought an orange T-shirt on which they scrawled messages of love and remembrance.

Bookending the memorial, Duarte’s niece left two poems she had written two weeks ago, begging him to give up a drug habit his family said he had been wrestling with for years.

“He told me one time he didn’t want to go on living because he said nobody loved him,” said his grandmother, Mary Lou Maturino, 81. “I’m glad it’s all over. He was suffering from the drugs. . . . Deep down in his heart, he was a good kid.”

He was also torn between two worlds: the lure of drugs and gangs in La Habra and his wife and two young children in Riverside. His mother said his drug addiction overpowered his desire to be a good father.

“He was not this vicious hard-core, you know, thing that they are trying to make it sound like,” Terry Duarte said.

According to Riverside County court records, Duarte was awaiting trial after being charged in June with shoplifting from a Riverside Home Depot.

He also has prior convictions from 1997 to 1999 for resisting police in Fullerton and La Habra and for exhibiting a replica firearm.

Sunday’s shooting brought dozens of neighbors to the street, where they angrily shouted at officers and quietly fumed about what they said has been a pattern of heavy-handed actions by police.

“When I was young, I trusted the police,” said Ruth Joyner, 59, a longtime resident. “They were the people you were supposed to go to.”

She said in the last 10 years, police actions in her neighborhood have left her suspicious.

“It’s almost like sometimes the police are as bad as the gang members,” she said. “It didn’t make any difference if Michael was really bad. They didn’t have to kill him.”

Police, though, said they have good relations with most people in the neighborhood, which they said has overcome crime problems.

“It is not a perfect neighborhood. . . . The problems are being worked on,” Rees said.

“The fact that [the shooting] happened right now is not a reflection of that neighborhood. That suspect was just running through there.”

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How Case Unfolded

The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old man Sunday by La Habra police.

1. At 11:45 a.m. a police officer approaches Michael Duarte at bank ATM.

2. Duarte flees, zigzagging through alleys and backyards.

3. Officer shoots Duarte on 2nd Street.

* July 6: Nam Quoc Nguyen, 21, was killed by Garden Grove police when they said he emerged from a car carrying a gun. Police had pulled the vehicle over to question Nguyen, whom they identified as a suspect in a home-invasion robbery.

* May 5: Antonio Saldivar, 18, was killed by Huntington Beach police after he allegedly pointed what turned out to be a toy gun at a police officer.

* April 19: Sergio Perez, 29, and Claro Hernandez, 24, were killed by Anaheim police in Garden Grove as they emerged from a fast-food restaurant after robbing it. Police had been trailing the gunmen for hours as suspects in a series of fast-food holdups.

* April 13: James Titus Walker, 22, was killed by Orange County sheriff’s deputies after robbing a Dana Point bank and fleeing to a nearby apartment complex, where he died in a gunfight with pursuing officers.

*

Michael Duarte was the sixth person to be killed during confrontations with police in Orange County this year.

Source: La Habra Police Department

Times staff writers Scott Gold, Scott Martelle, Stuart Pfeifer and Kimi Yoshino contributed to this report.