Deputy who killed mother in front of child also body-slammed school janitor, lawsuit says
Eight months before fatally shooting a woman in front of her 9-year-old daughter, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Ty Shelton allegedly body-slammed a school janitor who was taking out the trash, according to a new lawsuit.
Filed on behalf of the Palmdale School District, the March 29 suit targets both Shelton and the Sheriff’s Department in Los Angeles Superior Court, saying the lawman should have seen that custodian Eric Rios clearly wasn’t fleeing and didn’t look anything like the suspect Shelton was chasing.
The deputy did not respond to a request for comment. In an emailed statement Friday, the department said it had not yet officially received the claim but that it takes all uses of force seriously.
“The department conducted an internal investigation into this incident, which was reviewed by the North Patrol Division Commander,” the statement said. “It was determined to be objectively reasonable and within policy.”
Meanwhile, Palmdale school Supt. Raul Maldonado said the district had not been aware of the lawsuit, and that it should have been filed on behalf of an insurance company, not on behalf of the district.
The attorney who filed the suit did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment. Maldonado said the attorney had been retained by the insurance company seeking to recover the cost of the janitor’s workers’ compensation claim.
Maldonado did not offer any comment on the violent incident at the center of the case.
The incident started in early March last year, after deputies based in Lancaster responded to a call over what the Sheriff’s Department has described as “criminal threats.” When the suspect fled his residence and ran into a nearby school, deputies started chasing him. According to the lawsuit, it was during that chase that Shelton spotted Eric Rios — a school janitor — as Rios was carrying a bag of trash.
“The suspected criminal and Eric Rios were not similar in appearance such that a reasonable person under similar circumstances as Ty Shelton should not have mistaken Eric Rios for the fleeing criminal suspect,” the suit says, though it does not offer a description of either man. “Deputy Shelton nonetheless charged toward Mr. Rios, who yelled out that he was not the suspect.”
Then, Shelton allegedly slammed Rios to the ground in an act the lawsuit describes as “negligent” and “an exercise of excessive force.”
The Sheriff’s Department, however, said Rios was wearing the same clothing as the suspect and fit the man’s physical description, which led deputies to think he was the person they’d been chasing.
“A use of force occurred,” the department said, “and it was quickly determined that the individual was not the suspect.”
Afterward, the deputy tried to help Rios and offered him medical aid, officials said. It’s not clear whether the suspect was caught.
According to the suit, Rios sustained “substantial injuries,” leading him to file a claim for workers’ compensation benefits. The suit doesn’t specify how much those benefits came out to, but also asks for money to cover the costs of litigation and any prejudgment interest.
Deputies tried to detain the man, but he refused to comply with their orders and tried to grab a deputy’s firearm, authorities said.
This is at least the third time Shelton’s use of force has come under scrutiny.
In 2020, he shot and killed a man while responding to a domestic violence call in Lancaster. Deputies said 62-year-old Michael Thomas had tried to grab one of their guns before Shelton shot him. Thomas’ fiancee disputed that account, telling a local TV station that Thomas had refused to let deputies enter the house and was turning away from them when Shelton shot him.
“I heard Michael say, ‘I have a right to not let you in my house,’” she told the station at the time.
County records show prosecutors declined to file charges against Shelton in that case, though they acknowledged that “there may have been other reasonable options available” to him instead of killing Thomas.
Three years later, the deadly encounter with a Lancaster mother also started with a domestic violence call. Niani Finlayson called 911 for help in December, saying her former boyfriend was strangling her and trying to hurt her daughter, according to a notice of claim — the precursor to a lawsuit — that an attorney for Finlayson’s family filed last year.
At some point before deputies arrived, 9-year-old Xaisha Davis said, she handed her mother a knife, according to the notice.
“He was hurting my mother and me,” the girl later told reporters at a news conference. “I didn’t have [any] choice but to get something sharp.”
According to the claim, Finlayson was sitting on the floor inside her home and “not threatening anyone” when deputies showed up and opened fire from outside, shooting her four times through a sliding glass door.
The department offered a different account in a news release posted online last year. When deputies arrived at Finlayson’s apartment, the release said, they heard shouting inside, and a woman came to the door with a large knife and said she was “going to stab her boyfriend for pushing her daughter.”
The mother retreated inside, the release said, heading toward where her former boyfriend was sitting. Deputies followed her, and “a deputy-involved shooting occurred.”
The sheriff’s department said 27-year-old Niani Finlayson had a knife and was threatening to stab her estranged boyfriend when Lancaster deputies responded to a domestic violence call. Her family disputes that and has filed a claim signaling they plan to file a lawsuit.
Less than three weeks later, attorney Bradley Gage filed the notice of claim on behalf of Finlayson’s family, signaling plans to sue the county and the Sheriff’s Department for $30 million. In a news conference at the time, Gage called for the deputy to be fired, and Finlayson’s daughter called for his prosecution.
The Sheriff’s Department has a troubled history in the Antelope Valley, where a two-year federal investigation found in 2013 that deputies had a pattern of using unreasonable force, harassing and intimidating people and making unlawful stops of Black and Latino residents.
Afterward, the county entered into a sweeping settlement agreement that outlined a series of reforms to be overseen by monitors. Since then, those monitors have criticized the department for not following through quickly enough on making some of the required changes.
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