Just 23 years old and near the start of her life in law enforcement, Toni McBride brimmed with youthful exuberance. A slew of online videos show the Los Angeles Police Department officer blasting away at targets, with prize-winning speed and accuracy, on a gun range in the Simi Valley foothills.
McBride, an officer in LAPD’s Newton Division, fired an array of shotguns, pistols and assault rifles. She cavorted and strutted, sometimes within view of Hollywood glitterati, who used the same firing range to hone the gunplay they would use for movies and TV. When star Keanu Reeves shouted out to her LAPD division in one video, the young cop laughed with delight. “Hey, he knows!,” she said, clapping. “Shootin’ Newton!”
But less than two weeks after the posting of that video, McBride’s gun use turned deadly earnest.
In the middle of a scruffy street south of downtown on April 22, she faced off with a man holding a razor box cutter. She fired six shots from her Glock 17, hitting Daniel Hernandez with every round and killing the 38-year-old carpet installer and father of a teenage daughter.
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