A Los Angeles police officer won’t be criminally charged in the controversial shooting of Jesse Romero, a 14-year-old boy whose 2016 death inspired protests in his Boyle Heights neighborhood and became part of a broader, often-heated debate over how officers use deadly force.
Los Angeles County prosecutors outlined their reasoning in a memo made public Monday, saying Officer Eden Medina reasonably believed the teenager posed a deadly threat and used “reasonable force” to defend himself and others.
Central to the controversy surrounding the shooting was whether Jesse fired a revolver at police or whether the gun went off after the teenager tossed it over a fence. After examining and testing the revolver, prosecutors wrote, an investigator determined that the “most likely explanation of the evidence was that the revolver was fired, then dropped.”
Witnesses, however, told investigators they saw Jesse throw the gun and heard it fire when it hit the ground, the report said.
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