A New Mexico police officer has been charged with murder after shocking body camera footage showed him fatally shooting a grandmother as she drove away during a traffic stop.
Las Cruces Police Officer Felipe Hernandez turned himself in Tuesday and was charged with second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement in the Oct. 3 death of Teresa Gomez, 45. KFOX reported.
“There was no need for him to use deadly force,” Doña Ana County District Attorney Gerald Byers said of the officer who fired three shots.
“We considered self-defense. There was no self-defense.”
The deceased's grandmother's family has also filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the city and police, alleging excessive force and civil rights violations.
According to KFOX, Hernandez stopped Gomez, who was driving with passenger Jesus Garcia, 38, at around 5 a.m., but later realized that Hernandez was frequently trespassing. It is said that he did.
Previously released video showed the eight-year veteran shining a flashlight into the car and realizing the passenger was holding a paintball gun.
Hernandez questioned Gomez, told him he believed he was trespassing (something Gomez repeatedly denied) and asked him to get out of the car.
She refused to come out and told him “don't touch me” when he reached for her arm, but eventually complied as Hernandez threatened to shoot her with a Taser. is.
Gomez says she was at the public housing complex a few hours after visiting a friend named Butterfly, who again tells her that she is trespassing.
At some point, he realized the passenger was Garcia.
“Jesus Garcia,” Hernandez shouted. “Oh my god, you're back on the premises again!”
The officer then tells Gomez that Garcia has a warrant for his arrest and is not allowed on the premises. The exchange became heated as he used profanity and threatened to have his car towed.
After Gomez questions why he needs his name, he tells Gomez, “You don't listen.” “Because we're under investigation. You're like Jesus Garcia. You always want to argue.”
In the video, he tells her she needs to cooperate or he will “make her life a really, really living hell.”
He allowed Gomez to return to the car while he wrote down her information, but she immediately tried to drive away with the door open, causing Gomez to fire at least three shots while yelling, “Stop!” Stop! “
When the car stopped a few feet away, Gomez could be heard screaming.
Garcia was later arrested on multiple warrants and had pending drug and robbery charges. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News.
Hernandez was on administrative leave as of Oct. 17 before he was arrested on suspicion of murder. The Las Cruces Police Department had not previously released his identity.
“From the beginning of the interaction between Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Gomez, there was no ability to control protocol,” District Attorney Byers said. “The interaction I had with her was extremely substandard on a very human level and did not meet the standards that LCPD requires of its officers.”
He noted that Gomez was seen backing his car toward Hernandez, but said the officer was not in a “danger zone” at the time of the shooting. KOB reported.
“Teresa Gomez was not a fugitive felon because she posed no danger to Officer Hernandez or anyone else,” Byers said.
Although Hernandez had been involved in use-of-force incidents before, he had never killed anyone until the deadly encounter, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News.
Gomez's family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the city and police, alleging excessive force and civil rights violations.
Shannon Kennedy, an attorney for the family, said, “The Las Cruces Police Department's lack of internal oversight and oversight allowed a culture of aggression to develop and encouraged the acceptance of the unlawful use of deadly force in the death of Teresa Gomez, which could have been prevented.'' That was a contributing factor.” recently told CNN.
“When you have a controversial officer-involved shooting, that's certainly a concern,” Las Cruces Interim Police Chief Jeremy Storey told the outlet in November.
“After every critical incident, we critically review our training, policies and equipment and look for areas of concern that need to be addressed. Any response must be based on objective measures and “We cannot influence the criminal investigation.”
Gomez's family is struggling to understand her death.
“If you've seen the video, you can see from the beginning how the police officer was talking to my mother…For a son, a daughter, a mother, a father, someone, a grown man, is just like his own mother. It's hard to see her speak like that,'' her eldest son, Johnny Gomez, told CNN.
“I couldn't understand at what point it happened because there didn't seem to be any chance of it happening,” his sister Angela Lozano Gutierrez told the magazine. She said: “It seemed like they were on the verge of letting her go, given everything that had happened to her.
“So it was really shocking that it ended with her dying,” she added.
