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California

CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / SAN FRANCISCO

By Maria L. La Ganga
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The transit police officer who shot an unarmed man to death at an Oakland train station in the early hours of New Year’s Day resigned Wednesday, according to the Bay Area Rapid Transit district.

The officer did not show up at a meeting with BART investigators scheduled for Wednesday morning, the transit agency said in a brief statement. Instead, his attorney and his union representative tendered his resignation.

BART officials have not released the officer’s name, and he has yet to give a statement about the shooting. But a wrongful death claim filed against the transit agency identifies Johannes Mehserle as the officer who shot Oscar J. Grant III in the back last week.

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Grant, 22, was buried Wednesday in Hayward. Cellphone videos of the shooting, shown on local television and the Internet, have sparked demonstrations against BART.

-- Maria La Ganga

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Maria L. La Ganga

Maria L. La Ganga is the deputy managing editor for California and Metro, overseeing the Los Angeles Times’ largest editorial department. She joined The Times in 1981 as an academic intern, splitting her time between the former Metro section and National Dragster, the official publication of the National Hot Rod Assn. She has served as Seattle bureau chief, San Francisco bureau chief, edited in the Business section and pitched in on six presidential elections, five for The Times and one for the Guardian. La Ganga left The Times in 2015 and returned in 2018 after a brief hiatus during which she wrote for the Guardian and the Idaho Statesman. She was named city editor in 2022 and promoted to her current role in 2024. La Ganga graduated from Granada Hills High School in the San Fernando Valley and Cal State Northridge, where she studied English literature and journalism.

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