LOS ANGELES -- Police body camera video released Monday shows the moments after an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer shot and killed a man inside of a Corona Costco in 2019.
In the newly released body camera footage, off-duty Los Angeles Officer Salvador Sanchez, who initially cooperated with police, can be heard saying he wanted an attorney present before he answered any further questions.
The video shows officers with the Corona Police Department arrive on the scene as frantic customers ran out of the store. Once inside, the video shows officers finding off-duty Officer Salvador Sanchez laying on the ground.
Officer: Are you hurt? Did you get shot?
Sanchez: I thought I got shot. I still feel pain in the side of my head.
Sanchez told police that he returned fire after believing he had been shot, killing 32-year-old Kenneth French, who was developmentally disabled, and wounding his parents.
Sanchez: I see a blast, and I feel my head get knocked off, and I fall to the ground and dropped my son. When I dropped my son, I looked over and the guy like hunkers down.
Officer: What guy?
Sanchez: The guy in the blue shirt. I believe he was still armed, and so I shot.
But police never found a weapon, and Sanchez was not shot.
Security video released after the shooting showed some kind of physical altercation between the two men, but it was not clear how the altercation started or how it escalated into a fatal shooting.
Prosecutors and a grand jury declined to file charges against Sanchez, but LAPD ruled the shooting was outside department policy.
And while Sanchez initially answered the officer’s questions in the newly released video, he later changed his mind and said he would not be talking further without a lawyer present.
“As far as any further questioning, I will lawyer up,” he said in the video.
LAPD said Sanchez has not been employed with the department since June of last year. As for the French family, they have filed a lawsuit against Sanchez and the city.
