Former Long Beach, California school safety officer who shot 18-year-old Manuela in the head
Rodríguez, causing him brain death, has been charged with murder, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Eddie González, 51, will appear in court this Friday, where the reading of the first degree murder charge will take place, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement.
González was arrested this Wednesday in the city of Orange.
He had previously been fired by the Long Beach Unified School District for violating its security protocols and lethal use of force.
[The death of 'Mona' Rodríguez is already being investigated as a homicide]
The defendant could not be reached for comment from
The Associated Press
news agency
.
At the moment it is not known if he already has a lawyer.
'Mona' Rodríguez, who was shot in the head by an agent, holds her 5-month-old son in her arms.
Rodríguez, also known as
Mona,
was the mother of a 5-month-old baby.
He was shot in the neck with an expansive bullet that destroyed his brain
, as reported by his mother, Manuela Sahagún, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
Long Beach Police said Gonzalez was driving a school security patrol near Millikan High School when he witnessed a fight between Rodriguez and another 15-year-old teenager in a parking lot.
When González intervened, Rodríguez got into a car with two other young men, her 20-year-old boyfriend who was behind the wheel, and her 16-year-old brother who was riding in the back seat.
Neither man was injured.
Video from the scene apparently shows González shooting at least twice after the vehicle started when he approached them.
On video: the moment a young Latina is shot in the head by an agent in California
Sept.
30, 202101: 47
The Long Beach School District determined that he
had violated safety protocols by shooting at a moving car
and in a situation in which neither his life nor that of others was at risk.
"We believe the decision to fire this officer is justified and frankly the right thing to do," Superintendent Jill Baker said in a statement, adding that the officer did not live up to the school district's standards.
[Mom's boyfriend is the main suspect in the death of the boy whose skeleton was found in Texas]
Rodríguez was disconnected from the artificial respirator that maintained the vital functions of her body on October 5, eight days after she was declared brain dead from the impact of the bullet.
Rodríguez's organs were donated by his family to five people, who
received his heart, liver, lungs and kidneys
.
The staff at Long Beach Memorial Hospital medical center fired her like a hero, playing her favorite song over and over as she was carried down the hall and the entire time she was in the operating room.
"Another family will have one more opportunity to fight, an opportunity that we did not have," she
said a few days before Óscar Rodríguez, one of
Mona's
four brothers, disconnected her
.
