A federal jury has awarded $17 million to the daughters of a 39-year-old homeless man who was shot and killed by a Tustin police officer five years ago.
The daughters’ attorney, Dale K. According to Galipo, in reaching their verdict Tuesday morning, jurors said the fatal shooting of Luis Manuel Garcia in 2021 was not only excessive, but also unjustified. Attorneys Michael Carrillo and Renee V. Massongsong also represented the sisters in a civil case against the city of Tustin.
“This verdict means a lot to them because they feel like there is some justice for their father, some confirmation that his life meant something,” Galipo said in a phone interview.
Galipo said the verdict also brought some closure to the case for Garcia’s daughters – 23-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Camila – who have been following the case for the past five years.
“For the jury to unanimously say that the officer was completely wrong and your father was not at fault, I think that really means a lot to them.”
He said the jury valued Garcia’s life at $5 million, damages at $5 million and an additional $7 million for his family.
The Tustin Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The city of Tustin defended its officers, saying in writing that the investigation by the California Department of Justice, which is required by law to investigate fatal officer-involved shootings, determined that the police officers in the case acted in self-defense and the use of force against an armed suspect was justified.
“While we continue to express our condolences, we are disappointed by this verdict in this civil lawsuit, and will explore our options moving forward,” Tustin said in a statement.
The Garcia sisters filed a federal civil lawsuit in February 2022 and identified Estela Silva as the police officer who fatally shot their father.
The shooting occurred on August 9, 2021, in front of a mobile home park at 15401 William St. According to family and authorities, Garcia, who suffered from mental health issues at the time, was living on the street and sleeping behind a large bush along a wall surrounding the mobile home park.
Silva and three other officers responded to the scene that morning when a resident, a retired Tustin police officer, reported to a police dispatcher that a homeless man had been living in the bushes in front of the mobile home park for the past two days and had a “large steak knife,” according to the lawsuit and a California Department of Justice report.
The caller told the dispatcher he had seen the man “walking with a knife, swinging it around, talking to himself” the day before, the state report said. She described the man as a white adult male with blonde hair whose features did not match Garcia, who was a Latino man with a buzz cut.
An officer’s body-worn camera captured the moments that led to the shooting. The nine-minute video shows Silva walking toward bushes with his service weapon while Officer Joshua Yuhas pursues him.
At some point, Silva peeks into the bushes and orders Garcia several times to come out with his hands up and stop touching his bag. As Garcia tries to escape, Silva and Yuhas try to catch him. The video shows Garcia retreating.
According to the video, when Garcia tries to leave a second time, he does so with a white wooden stick in one hand, causing Yuhas to pull out his Taser and Silva to point his service weapon at Garcia, ordering him to put his hands up. Silva later told investigators that he had been hit with a stick, but nowhere in the video did he inform the officers who assisted him. Silva was not wearing a body-worn camera.
After a few seconds of retreating, Garcia comes out, holding the stick upright with plastic bags filled with recyclables, asking Silva in Spanish: “tell me peger? Del, del, pega me?” – “Why do you want to kill me? Go for it, hit me.
The video then shows Yuhas firing his Taser and Garcia screaming in pain. As he walks out of the bushes, Silva fires his weapon twice.
Garcia runs screaming toward the third officer and drops his baton before being pushed into a bed of roadside bushes.
“I conflict, I conflict,” Garcia is heard saying – ”It hurts, it hurts“
Garcia repeatedly tells officers he has stomach pains while they try to handcuff him. In the video, his back is seen soaked in blood.
According to the video, for more than 10 minutes, officers try to provide medical care to Garcia, at times speaking to him in English and Spanish to keep him conscious and trying to determine how many times he was shot.
In an interview with investigators, Silva said he had had two previous run-ins with Garcia. The first time was in 2020 when he arrested him on suspicion of robbing an ice cream vendor. Authorities said Garcia allegedly used a stick to threaten the salesman. The second incident took place three months before the shooting. She told investigators they had arrested him on an outstanding warrant for assault with a deadly weapon.
“I knew he would immediately become confrontational,” Silva said in the Justice Department report. “I knew he had the ability to attack people around him. … It didn’t surprise me that he would actually have multiple knives or that he would have one knife.”
Silva told investigators that he believed Garcia meant to bludgeon his face with a wooden stick and that he opened fire because he had nowhere to turn. He told investigators that as he was running toward the third officer, identified only by last name Frias, she shot him a second time to force him to drop the rod.
The state report found that Silva “used deadly force to overcome the suspect’s resistance to his attack with a large concrete baton and in defense of Officer Frias who faced imminent danger.”
Although Justice Department reports and several witnesses claim they saw Garcia armed with a knife, no such weapon was recovered at the scene.
Galipo disputed the state’s findings and said officers never ordered Garcia to drop the wooden stick or he would be shot or shocked with a Taser.
“He conceded at least at trial, and the video shows he never swung the stick and the stick was never coming toward anybody,” Galippo said. “Was there an imminent threat? Maybe. Did it rise to the level of an immediate threat of death? I don’t think so, and neither did the jury.”
