A Los Angeles jury on Thursday sided with the city in a civil trial over the fatal shooting of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, a 14-year-old struck by a police officer’s stray bullet while Christmas shopping with her mother in 2021. After deliberating for slightly more than a day, the panel voted 9-3 to reject the family’s wrongful death claims, finding no negligence on the part of the city or its police department.
The parents of Orellana-Peralta had sued the city for wrongful death, negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress following the incident at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood neighborhood. The nearly monthlong trial concluded with the jury clearing the municipality of liability on all three counts.
Los Angeles Police Department Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. was responding to a December 2021 dispatch call about a man attacking two women with a bicycle lock. Jones and several other armed officers entered the store to confront the suspect. Jones told the LAPD’s Use of Force Review Board that he mistook the bike lock for a handgun and believed the man stood before an exterior brick wall. The suspect was actually positioned in front of women’s clothing dressing rooms.
Jones fired his rifle three times, killing the attacker. One of the rounds struck the floor behind the suspect, ricocheted, and penetrated the dressing room wall, striking Orellana-Peralta.
The incident triggered a series of internal and external reviews that produced conflicting conclusions. In 2022, the Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, determined that Jones was justified in firing his weapon once but ruled his second and third shots violated department policy. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore conducted a separate review that year and concluded all three shots were unjustified.
Criminal liability was addressed in April 2024, when a report from the California Attorney General’s office cleared Jones of criminal charges. State prosecutors found that the officer acted with the intent to defend himself from “what he reasonably believed to be imminent death or serious bodily injury.”
Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said the city shares the family’s grief but maintained that the jury reached the correct decision. She said the city stands by Officer Jones, who she said will carry the “burden of Valentina’s death with him for many years.”
Nick Rowley, the attorney representing the Orellana-Peralta family, called the verdict “the most devastating loss of my career” in a video statement released after the ruling. Rowley said he does not understand the jury’s decision to absolve the city of liability.