LAPD killed 14-year-old girl during wild shootout inside Burlington store

Lord, have mercy, at this time of year…

Source: VALERIE MACON / Getty

Los Angeles Police Department officers opened fire on a suspect inside a local Burlington Coat Factory store over the weekend. Although the officers’ primary target was killed, they also killed a 14-year-old girl named Valentina Orellana-Peralta. Peralta was in a dressing room when the madness ensued and one of the officer’s bullets passed through the wall and struck her dead.

According to CBS News, the shooting started after the 24-year-old suspect named Daniel Elena Lopez was being pursued by police after they were with reports of shots fired. When they arrived, they witnessed Lopez assaulting a woman with a bicycle lock. They immediately opened fire, striking not only Lopez but Orellana-Peralta who was in the changing room with her mother. Can you imagine the horror that that poor woman experienced watching her child die from a gunshot wound a couple of days before Christmas?

Asked if the girl was shot by police, LAPD Assistant Chief Dominic Choi said, “Preliminarily, we believe that round was an officer’s round.”

To make matters worse, there was no gun recovered on the scene despite reports of “shots fired”.

Moore promised a “thorough, complete and transparent investigation” into the shooting and said recordings of the 911 calls, store security video and police body-cam footage will be released by Monday.

Hard to imagine anything conducted by the LAPD being “thorough, complete and transparent” but best believe people are going to be looking at this investigation very closely.