Lawyer for family in Corona Costco shooting believes additional video may have captured it
The lawyer representing the family shot at the Corona Costco by an off-duty police officer said Thursday he believes there was more surveillance video available to the prosecution than what was released this week.
Dale Galipo noted that a surveillance camera hangs above the deli where the shooting took place — much closer than the camera that produced the grainy video of the incident.
The Riverside County Grand Jury on Wednesday, Sept. 24 decided not to bring charges against Los Angeles Police Department Officer Salvador Sanchez in the June shooting death of an intellectually disabled Corona-area man, Kenneth French, 32, and the wounding of his parents. Sanchez said he fired his gun after French struck him in an unprovoked attack.
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District Attorney Mike Hestrin, in announcing the grand jury’s decision Wednesday, said instead of having his office decide whether to charge Sanchez, he gave the case to the grand jury. That body has the power to compel witnesses to testify.
During a news conference in which he played the video, Hestrin said it was the only one of the incident that exists. The video appears to show Kenneth French’s father pushing him away, his mother crawling to them and then all three falling. The video does not show Sanchez or the shooting.
But on Thursday, appearing at his own news conference with French’s parents in Corona, Galipo cast doubt on the lone-video theory.
“It’s undisputed there’s a video camera close to where the incident occurred that would have clearly captured the entire incident,” he said.
Galipo said family members went to the Costco on McKinley Street days after the shooting and were told that employees had seen the video. The family members assumed the video described then was from the camera that was overhead the incident, and not the camera that was a distance away from which the evidence video came.
When the family asked employees about the closer video camera, Galipo said, “We were told it was turned off for the privacy concerns of the cashiers.” That didn’t make a lot of sense in a public store, Galipo said.
“They then said, ‘No, that wasn’t the reason, it just was not working at the time,’ ” Galipo said. “So we have some real question marks about why they would have a camera there that wasn’t working, so we’re trying to follow up on that.”
That camera hangs down from a metal bar about 15 feet offset from the meat department in the deli. It is located at one end of the deli, toward the middle of the store.
The camera is visible in the video Hestrin released.
Thursday, John Hall, a spokesman for the DA’s Office, referred questions about the cameras to the Corona Police Department, which did the initial investigation. Corona Sgt. Chad Fountain, referring to the camera that taped the incident, said, “That video camera was the only working camera that covered the incident.”
Does that mean that the closer camera was not working, or that its lens was pointed away from where the shooting happened? Fountain said Costco would have to answer that question. A phone message left for a Costco spokeswoman in at its Kirkland, Washington, corporate office Thursday was not returned.
Galipo has won judgments for a number of clients who have been shot by police, and on Thursday, he said he believed the case was tilted in Sanchez’s favor.
“If it was anyone else, other than a police officer, who had shot three unarmed people in Costco, including shots to the back … they would have been detained, arrested, brought to jail and prosecuted within 48 hours,” Galipo said. “It’s difficult to believe … that the grand jury could not indict on any charge.”
Hestrin said Wednesday that the investigation was unbiased. The grand jury did not announce why it chose not to charge Sanchez.
Kenneth French, whose family said had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was non-verbal, had struck Sanchez in the back of his head, hard enough for the officer to believe he had been shot, Hestrin said Wednesday.
Witnesses said Sanchez, who was holding his 18-month-old son in his arms when he was hit while standing in line for food samples, was heard by witnesses after firing at the Frenches making a statement about being shot, and he was seen checking the back of his head for blood, Hestrin said.
Galipo said Thursday that he was surprised to hear that Sanchez, who had previously said through his attorney that he was knocked unconscious, was now saying that he thought he had been shot.
Hestrin said at Wednesday that he did not believe there was any evidence that Sanchez had been knocked unconscious.
Both parents said they had begged the officer not to shoot their son and tried to explain his mental condition to Sanchez after Kenneth struck him. Four shots hit Kenneth French, one hit his mother and one hit his father.
“Salvador Sanchez was clearly in the wrong, as he was not in imminent danger to fire 10 shots at an entire unarmed family, and that was clear, even in the grainy, poor-quality video,” Paola French, Kenneth’s mother, said.
Russell French says the family is “extremely heartbroken” with the grand jury’s decision. “Our family has just taken another blow, and we have lost complete faith in the U.S, justice system.”
Galipo said that both parents testified before the panel.
“I can tell you over half the questions to my clients were not about the shooting, they were about Kenneth,” Galipo said, including about Kenneth’s past and his mental illness and any violent acts he may have previously done.
Sanchez is on desk duty pending an LAPD administrative investigation. The Los Angeles Police Commission will decide whether the shooting was within department policy.
Galipo has already filed a claim with the city of Los Angeles for the shooting. If rejected, the attorney says he plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the Frenches.