A federal jury awarded $17 million to the daughters of a 39-year-old homeless man who was shot and killed by a Tustin police officer five years ago.
In reaching their verdict Tuesday morning, jurors said the fatal shooting of Luis Manuel Garcia in 2021 was not only excessive but also unreasonable, according to Dale K. Galipo, an attorney for the daughters. Attorneys Michael Carrillo and Renee V. Masongsong also represented the sisters in the civil case against the city of Tustin.
“This verdict means a lot to them because they feel that there’s some justice for their father, some vindication that his life meant something,” Galipo said in a phone interview.
Galipo said the verdict also brought some closure for Garcia’s daughters — Emily, 23, and Camila, 17 — who have been dealing with the case for the last five years.
“To have a jury unanimously say the officer was totally wrong and your father was not at fault at all, I think it really meant a lot to them.”
He said the jury valued Garcia’s life at $5 million, $5 million for damages and an additional $7 million to his family.
The Tustin Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The city of Tustin defended its officers, stating in writing that a California Department of Justice investigation, which is required by law to look into fatal officer-involved shootings, determined that the police officers in the case acted in self-defense and were justified in the use of force against an armed suspect.
“While we continue to extend condolences, we are disappointed by this verdict, in this civil suit, and will be exploring our options going forward,” Tustin said in a statement.
The Garcia sisters filed the federal civil lawsuit in February 2022 and identified Estella Silva as the police officer who fatally shot their father.
The shooting occurred on Aug. 9, 2021, in front of a mobile home park at 15401 William St. At the time, Garcia, who suffered from mental health issues, was living in the street and sleeping behind a large bush along a wall surrounding the mobile home park, according to family and authorities.
Silva and three other officers responded to the location that morning after a resident, a retired Tustin police officer, reported to a police dispatcher that a homeless man had been living in the bushes in front of the mobile home park for the previous two days and had a “large steak knife,” according to the lawsuit and a California Department of Justice report.
The caller told the dispatcher she had seen the man the day before “walking with the knife, swinging it around, talking to himself,” the state report said. She described the man as a white adult male with blond hair, features that did not match Garcia, a Latino man with a buzz cut.
An officer’s body-worn camera captured the moments that led up to the shooting. The eleven-minute video shows Silva walking toward the bushes with her service weapon drawn while Officer Joshua Yuhas follows.
At some point, Silva peeks into the bushes and orders Garcia several times to come out with his hands up and to stop touching his bags. As Garcia tries to step out, Silva and Yuhas try to grab him. Garcia retreats, the video shows.
When Garcia tries to exit a second time, he does so with a white wooden stick in one hand, prompting Yuhas to pull his Taser out and Silva to point her service weapon at Garcia, ordering him to put his hands up, according to the video. Silva later told investigators she was jabbed with the stick, but nowhere in the video does she report it to the officers assisting her. Silva was not wearing a body-worn camera.
Seconds after retreating, Garcia steps out, holding the stick upright along with plastic bags filled with recyclables, asking Silva in Spanish: “Porque me quieres pegar? Dale, dale, pega me?” — “Why do you want to hit me? Go for it, hit me.”
The video then shows Yuhas firing his Taser and Garcia screaming in pain. As he steps out of the bushes, Silva fires her weapon twice.
Garcia runs away screaming toward a third officer and drops the stick before he’s pushed down into a bed of bushes growing along the street curb.
“Me duele, me duele,” Garcia is heard saying — “It hurts, it hurts.”
Garcia repeatedly tells the officers his stomach is hurting while they try to handcuff him. The video shows his back covered in blood.
For more than 10 minutes, officers try to provide Garcia medical care, oftentimes speaking to him in English and Spanish to keep him alert while trying to determine how many times he was shot, according to the video.
In an interview with investigators, Silva said she had two prior run-ins with Garcia. The first was in 2020 when she arrested him on suspicion of robbing an ice cream vendor. Authorities said Garcia allegedly used a stick to threaten the vendor. The second incident occurred three months before the shooting. She told investigators she arrested him on an outstanding warrant for assault with a deadly weapon.
“I knew he would be immediately confrontational,” Silva stated in the Justice Department report. “I knew he had the ability to assault people around him. … I wasn’t surprised that he would actually have several knives on him or a knife with him in his possession.”
Silva told investigators that she believed Garcia wanted to bash her face with the wooden rod and opened fire because she had nowhere to turn. She told investigators she shot him a second time to force him to drop the rod as he was running toward the third officer, who was only identified by a last name, Frias.
The state report found that Silva used “deadly force to overcome resistance in self-defense to the suspect’s attack with a large solid pole and in defense of Officer Frias who imminently faced danger.”
Though the Justice Department report and several witnesses claim they had seen Garcia armed with a knife, no such weapon was recovered from the scene.
Galipo disputed the state’s findings and said the officers never ordered Garcia to drop the wooden rod or that he would be shot or shocked with a Taser.
“They conceded at least at trial, and the video shows, he never swung the stick and the stick was never coming down towards anyone,” Galipo said. “Was there a potential threat? Maybe. Did it rise to the level of an immediate threat of death? I don’t think so, and neither did the jury.”
