Thread: The Short, Violent Life of Baby Susie Blame and regret as LA

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/34/news-fremon.php

The Short, Violent Life of Baby Susie
Blame and regret as LAPD and family search for answers
by CELESTE FREMON




The day after 19-month-old Susie Peña died during a shootout between her father, Raul Peña, and LAPD officers, family members and friends arrive at the site of the carnage, partly to grieve, but also to attempt to figure out how events could have gone so hideously wrong.

Some in the family think they personally could have changed things. "The police should have let me talk to Raul, but they refused," says Peña’s brother Elias Peña, as he fingers the elaborate sprays of bullet holes that pock the walls at Raul’s Auto Sales, the South Los Angeles used-car dealership where the shooting took place. Others talk angrily about how the press doesn’t get it, how the officers should have waited longer before storming a building with a baby inside, and how if the same scenario had unfolded in, say, Encino or Westwood, surely there would have been a different strategy and a different end to the story.

"The police act like my father was Osama bin Laden," says Raul Peña’s 15-year-old stepson, Ronald Depaz. "But my dad was a good man. He loved that baby. Police say he used her as a shield, but he didn’t. I was here before the police made me leave, and I could hear Raul shouting, ‘This is my baby! This is my baby!’ And the cops opened fire like it was nothing. Did you see how many bullet holes there were in there?" Ronald gestures toward the small interior office, now porous as a sieve. "One of those bullets hit my sister." At that, the boy’s veneer of composure breaks, and, pulling his black T-shirt up over his face, he begins to cry hard.

That same Monday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa extends his condolences to the Peña family yet points to Peña’s lethal recklessness. "We don’t know exactly what happened," Villaraigosa says to reporters. "But we do know this: There was a man with a firearm shooting at the public, shooting at officers. And, as a layman, I saw officers doing everything they could. I saw three different officers crying afterward."

Herma Peña Lemos,
a brother of Raul Peña

By Tuesday afternoon, LAPD Chief Bill Bratton has listened to Peña’s family’s version of events for 48 hours and decides he’s had enough. At a 4 p.m. press conference, he states unequivocally that officers used every possible means to get baby Susie out alive, and that Peña dealt the play all by himself. "This father is not a father of the year, as the family is now attempting to portray him," says Bratton, his expression grim and furious. "I refuse to allow this department to be maligned [by people who are] now trying to portray an individual who held his own daughter out as a human shield as somehow a hero. This guy is not a hero. He is a cold-blooded killer."

The fatal sequence of events that has L.A.’s police chief lining up on one side, the little girl’s family, their attorney and a string of community activists on another side, with the mayor somewhere in the center striving to calm the waters, began on Sunday just after 3 p.m., when Raul Peña left his used-car dealership, located at 10420 S. Avalon Blvd., and went to the home of the baby’s mother, Lorena Lopez, a half-block away. There, according to Lopez and her sister, he picked up the couple’s plum-cheeked toddler, Susie, and brought the girl back to work with him. "When my dad was under stress, he’d be with the baby to relax," says stepson Ronald. "Right now his business was going bad, and there were some debts. So that’s why he took the baby to work with him Sunday."

Nonsense, say police, contending that a combustible situation had been building in the family all weekend, that at 2 p.m. the day of the shooting, Lorena Lopez made a "domestic-terror report" to the police about Peña. And that after the shooting, Peña’s 16-year-old stepdaughter told police that he was jacked up on alcohol and cocaine that day, and had threatened to kill her, and baby Susie, and the girls’ mother, Lopez.

Whatever took place earlier, it appears that on Sunday, the stepdaughter, whose name is Ilsy Depaz, followed her stepfather back to the dealership, where Peña and the teenager got into an argument that escalated. Ilsy made a 911 call and told the operator Peña was threatening her physically. After the call came in to the Southeast Division of the LAPD at 3:47 p.m., two officers responded and learned that Peña had a gun and had fired shots before they got there. Family members and some witnesses disagree, saying that, when police arrived, Peña walked out of his office holding baby Susie with one hand and, with the other, pulled up his shirt to show he was unarmed. "I didn’t do nothing. Why are you here?" Peña is said to have shouted to the cops in Spanish. "This is a family dispute." It was moments later that neighbors heard the first "pop-pop" of gunfire.

When Lopez, the mother, heard the shots, she ran down the alley to the back of the dealership. By that time, the two officers had called for and received backup, and one of the new group informed Lopez she had to go home. "There’s a baby in there," Lopez says she told the cops. "Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot, there’s a baby!"

Back at her house, Lopez reached Peña on the phone at around 4:45 p.m. "Do you have a gun?" she asked him. Peña said no, but Lopez persisted. "Well, if you have it," she said in Spanish, "just put it on the floor. And give me the baby. I’m coming for the baby." Peña told her that the baby was fine and, according to Lopez, put Susie on the phone. Lopez heard the baby chirp, "Hi, Mommy," for the last time in her life. After that, Peña repeated, "Just tell the police to go away." But by then, events were moving with the force and speed of a freight train.

It is undisputed that there were three episodes of shooting, the second occurring shortly after 5 p.m. By this time, snipers were on rooftops, SWAT officers at the perimeters, and the police had set up a command center at 103rd Street and Avalon, from which they phoned Peña and urged him to surrender. During this same period, Lorena Lopez’s younger brother Joshua Lopez, 23, also tried unsuccessfully to get the cops to let him talk to Peña over the PA system. "Actually, I wanted to talk to him face-to-face," says Joshua. "I know I could have made him understand. And I know he never would have done harm to his daughter."


Asked why they refused such requests, the police say they felt any civilian interference was too great a risk. "That sort of thing works well on TV," says Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger, who was also at the scene. "But it’s different in real life. We don’t know who has a good relationship and who doesn’t. If you bring in the wrong person, then all of a sudden the bottom falls out, and what do you have then?"

Instead, the police continued to importune Peña to give up his weapons and let the teenage girl and the baby out. Finally, at around 5:15, under cover of police gunfire, stepdaughter Ilsy dashed from the dealership building to the southwest corner of the lot, where she lay down on the ground, and was dragged out by officers through a gap in the gate while clutching a rope. Then, police say, Peña came out and began shooting again â€â€

THIS IS VERY TRAGIC, AND I AM VERY SORRY THIS HAPPENED.

THIS IS VERY TRAGIC, AND I AM VERY SORRY THIS HAPPENED.

Me too. My heart just breaks for children that die at the hands of adults that should know better (parents, cops, pervs, ect.). Rest in peace innocent angel Susie.

This has been a big story in California since it happened, and a terrible tragedy for the young girl accidently killed. However a lot of misinformed and ignorant people are turning the incident into something else.

As I typed this I just heard on the radio that Jose Pena the guy who incited the confrontation with the police is an illegal! I was tempted to post an article about this a few days ago but held off because I wasn't sure it had anything to do with illegal immigration. Now it appears it does.


http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.17835.html

Shooting of Child Exposes Tensions Between LAPD, Community

Last Updated:
07-15-05 at 2:02PM

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dozens of protesters wave signs branding police as "baby killers." They heckle passing police cars as lines of baton-toting officers keep close watch on the restless crowd.

A police shootout this week that took the life of a toddler whose father held her as a shield has brought irate residents back to the streets of Watts, where 40 summers ago a deadly riot came to symbolize America's urban despair.

"We've got some trigger-happy policemen that don't belong on that force," Joeanne Gibson, 47, said at a growing makeshift memorial for the young victim, Suzie Pena. "I don't think they intended to shoot the baby, yet it could've been done another way."

The child was killed by a SWAT team bullet on July 10 in the arms of her father, Jose Pena, 34, as he fired dozens of rounds at officers, wounding one of them. The father, who police said was drunk and high, also was killed in the shootout outside his used-car business.

Suzie Pena will be buried Saturday after a funeral Mass at a local church.

The episode has left officers who took part in the gunbattle traumatized and prompted police leaders to use extreme caution in dealing with protesters.

"Emotions are heightened, particularly in communities like this that are disadvantaged and disenfranchised," Deputy Police Chief Earl Paysinger said. "We have to be very thoughtful when we provide policing in these communities."

The death of the girl was the latest in a series of bloody incidents involving the LAPD in inner-city neighborhoods.

Six months ago, police shot and killed 13-year-old Devin Brown, a black teenager who was behind the wheel of a stolen car that backed into a police cruiser after a chase. A Hispanic officer fired 10 shots at the driver.

Brown was shot three days after prosecutors declined to press charges against a Los Angeles police officer filmed repeatedly striking a black suspect with a metal flashlight.

This week's deadly gunbattle is the first police crisis faced by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who urged the diverse city to "dare to dream" when he was recently sworn in as mayor.

He expressed sorrow over the girl's death and the wounding of the officer, and asked the public to stay calm and reserve judgment until an investigation into the shooting is complete.

"Let's allow this process to take place and there will be transparency throughout," said Villaraigosa, the city's first Hispanic mayor since the 1800s. "If mistakes were made, we'll be open about that."

In a move that might help pacify the community, Villaraigosa proposed four new appointees - including a black civil rights leader and a businesswoman active in gay issues - to the civilian Police Commission.

Police Chief William Bratton, whose crime-fighting success and community outreach generally receive high marks, expressed dismay at the girl's death - but reminded residents that the father shot at officers before they shot back.

Still, tensions are simmering in Watts, a community of 65,000 people where Hispanics have replaced blacks as the majority.

Thirty-eight percent of families in the area, which is home to three public housing projects, lived below the federal poverty level, more than four times the national level, according to 2000 Census data.

The 1965 riots started when a white officer pulled over a black driver then raged over six hot August days and left 34 people dead and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Arson fires gutted numerous businesses on 103rd Street, later dubbed "Charcoal Alley."

Watts again erupted in violence in 1992, along with other parts of the city, following the acquittal of white police officers videotaped beating Rodney King.

Vacant storefronts still line the main boulevards and graffiti and discarded furniture are everywhere. Residents said relations with police have also changed little over the years.

"You don't hear about innocent white people getting killed by the police, I just don't see those stories," said Watts resident Kevin Sloan, 29, a part-time Wal-Mart worker and student with aspirations of teaching. "It's usually Hispanic or blacks."

Sloan, who is black, blamed "the mentality of the police ... until that changes, I don't think it will ever get better," he said.

I dont blame the police here, I blame the father (no matter his legal status). NO real father would ever place his child in such a dangerous situation....ever! The moment he chose to fire his weapon...first, with his daughter in the building with him, makes him guilty in my view.

Public disclosure of the dads toxicology results would do much to quell the blame game here.

Public disclosure of the dads toxicology results would do much to quell the blame game here

No, it wouldn't.

The media will see to that.

Excerpts from the story:

The death of the girl was the latest in a series of bloody incidents involving the LAPD in inner-city neighborhoods.

Six months ago, police shot and killed 13-year-old Devin Brown, a black teenager who was behind the wheel of a stolen car that backed into a police cruiser after a chase. A Hispanic officer fired 10 shots at the driver.

Brown was shot three days after prosecutors declined to press charges against a Los Angeles police officer filmed repeatedly striking a black suspect with a metal flashlight.

The 1965 riots started when a white officer pulled over a black driver then raged over six hot August days and left 34 people dead and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Arson fires gutted numerous businesses on 103rd Street, later dubbed "Charcoal Alley."

Watts again erupted in violence in 1992, along with other parts of the city, following the acquittal of white police officers videotaped beating Rodney King.

Vacant storefronts still line the main boulevards and graffiti and discarded furniture are everywhere. Residents said relations with police have also changed little over the years.

"You don't hear about innocent white people getting killed by the police, I just don't see those stories," said Watts resident Kevin Sloan, 29, a part-time Wal-Mart worker and student with aspirations of teaching. "It's usually Hispanic or blacks."

You'll notice that they felt the need to go back 40 years to make sure people stay really po'd.

There's nothing like a nice riot to pump up those slow summertime news cycles.