LAPD Shootings Of Bystanders Prompt Changes

LOS ANGELES, CA — A series of police shootouts that took the lives of innocent bystanders in Los Angeles prompted a move for less lethal weapons and training procedures, Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday.

The department is reviewing its options following the death of an Trader Joe's store manager during a shootout in Silver Lake this month and a the death of a homeless woman being held at knifepoint in the San Fernando Valley in June.

Moore released dramatic body-camera footage Tuesday of a June shooting in Van Nuys that resulted in the death of a woman who was being held hostage by a knife-wielding man, who also was killed.

He said officers responded to a homeless outreach center in the 6400 block of Tyrone Avenue around 1:10 June 16 on a report of a man with a knife assaulting a woman. After a tense standoff, officers fatally shot Guillermo Perez, 32, as he held a large serrated knife to the neck of Elizabeth Tollison, 49, Moore said.

"Tragically, the woman was also struck twice by gunfire," Moore said.

Tollison died at a hospital two days later.

At a news conference at Los Angeles police headquarters Tuesday, Moore discussed the shooting and displayed an edited "critical briefing" video that included footage from officers' body cameras showing their actions at the shooting scene.

According to Moore, officers had ordered Perez to drop his knife, but he refused, ultimately holding it to Tollison's neck. An officer had fired a beanbag shotgun during the confrontation, but it failed to stop Perez and the officers were forced to fire their handguns as the suspect pressed the knife into his hostage's neck, Moore said. Eighteen rounds were fired.

Moore said his department is reviewing a new "40mm launcher" weapon that fires a larger and more powerful projectile than the current beanbag shotguns. The weapon is more accurate and effective up to a distance of 100 feet, he said.

About six weeks after the June 16 shooting, LAPD officers exchanged gunfire with a suspect who was fleeing into a Silver Lake Trader Joe's store on July 21, and the store's assistant manager was killed in the crossfire. Moore said 27-year-old Melyda Corado was killed by a police bullet.

According to the LAPD, two officers -- identified as Sinlen Tse and Sarah Winans -- fired a total of eight shots, one of which struck the suspect, 28-year-old Gene Evin Atkins, in the left arm. Another struck Corado, traveling through her arm and into her body, police said.

Atkins surrendered after a roughly three-hour hostage situation at the market. He has been charged with Corado's murder, under the legal theory that he set the circumstances in motion that ended with her death.

Moore said Tuesday his department also reviewing any improvements it can make in its "command and control" training and procedures at crime scenes in the wake of these and other officer-involved shootings.

WARNING: THESE VIDEOS CONTAIN GRAPHIC FOOTAGE OF OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTINGS THAT LEFT THREE PEOPLE DEAD

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.