Woman Killed in Standoff With Long Beach Police

Long Beach homicide detectives are investigating the death of a 48-year-old woman shot by officers who fired beanbags during a standoff outside her home.

Holding an 8-inch knife, Glenda Reymer was shot twice after keeping Long Beach police at bay for about 15 minutes in the middle of a residential street late Friday morning, said Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Tabing.

The Long Beach woman threatened police and onlookers, and at one point put the knife to her throat, Tabing said.

After police attempted to negotiate, Reymer was warned that she would be shot if she did not drop the knife, Tabing said.

Reymer didn’t; police fired.

Reymer was hit in the arm and torso with beanbags fired from a 12-gauge shotgun, Tabing said. Police were about 30 to 35 feet away from her when they fired, after receiving the order from a sergeant on the scene, she added.

Reymer, an unemployed bartender, was pronounced dead at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. “It was a bad situation. Officers obviously felt they had to do something to end it peacefully,” Tabing said.

But Reymer’s live-in boyfriend, William Taylor, said Saturday that police should have found another way to end the standoff.

“It was a bad decision,” he said. “There were so many officers around her, and she was so tiny, such a frail woman, I don’t know why they couldn’t have used pepper spray. She’d still be alive.”

Beanbags, which police consider “less lethal” ammunition, are used by police departments across the nation. The bags travel much more slowly than bullets and are meant to control suspects without killing them.

Taylor said Reymer, who had three grown children, was “extremely ill” from an undiagnosed stomach illness and had lost almost 40 pounds since December. Reymer, a 5-foot, 6-inch woman, weighed just 89 pounds, Taylor said.

The couple had no insurance and could not afford medical help.

Taylor and police agree on how the incident started: Reymer made a bogus 911 call from the couple’s home, telling the dispatcher her boyfriend had overdosed. Taylor said he had not taken any drugs.

When paramedics and police found Taylor was fine, Reymer became irate. She went to her car and retrieved an 8-inch knife Taylor used to clean fish. Then she confronted officers and paramedics.

Before she called 911, Taylor said, Reymer had suffered a violent seizure. He said when she recovered, Reymer was disoriented and angry.

“She was out of it yesterday, the cops couldn’t see that? I told them what was going on, that she was sick,” said Taylor, 52. He said when the standoff began, he went outside his house in the 400 block of East 53rd Street, trying to help police. He said Reymer was in the street, holding the knife. Taylor said she was was surrounded by nearly a dozen officers and a K-9 unit.

Taylor went inside his house when police ordered him to do so.

“Then I heard two shots, ‘boom, boom!’ ” he said. “When I looked out my window, she was slumping to the ground, and the officer who had shot her was walking toward her body, the shotgun still smoking.”

Disputing the police account, Taylor estimated that officers were within 10 to 15 feet of Reymer when they shot her.

Paramedics, already on the scene, rushed in to perform CPR, Taylor said. “They rolled her over,” he said. “There was no blood, but she was not responding.”

Tabing, the Long Beach police spokeswoman, said homicide detectives were poring over evidence and interviewing witnesses to investigate whether the shooting was justified.