A judge today declared a mistrial after jurors announced they were deadlocked in the trial of a former Long Beach Unified School District safety officer charged with murder for shooting an 18-year-old woman.
After about two days of deliberations, the jury’s foreperson told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard M. Goul that the panel was split 7-5 — with the majority favoring convicting Eddie Gonzalez of second-degree murder. The other five opted for voluntary manslaughter and an acquittal on the murder charge for the Sept. 27, 2021, shooting of Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez about a block from Millikan High School in Long Beach.
Jurors were instructed that they could consider the lesser count of voluntary manslaughter only if they acquitted Gonzalez of second-degree murder.
The judge dismissed the jury after being told by the jury’s foreperson that no further deliberations would be helpful.
Gonzalez, 54, is due back in the Long Beach courtroom July 17 for a pretrial hearing.
Rodriguez was fatally shot as she sat in the front passenger seat of an Infiniti being driven by her boyfriend in a parking lot near the intersection of Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue in Long Beach.
The shooting was captured on video that was widely aired on local media.
Rodriguez died days later after being taken off life support. Gonzalez was charged with murder about a month later.
A prosecutor told the jury last Friday that Gonzalez tried to “play police officer” and made a series of bad decisions that led to the fatal shooting — while the defendant’s attorney argued that his client acted in self-defense out of fear he was going to be run over by the car.
In his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Lee Orquiola said Gonzalez “responded to youthful disobedience with deadly force” and “unjustifiably” fired two shots at the vehicle after an altercation between Rodriguez and a teenage female Millikan High School student about a block from the school’s campus.
The prosecutor told jurors all that Gonzalez had to do that day was to get the vehicle’s license plate number and let “real police officers handle the situation,” but said he instead “escalated the situation with a series of bad decisions.”
Gonzalez had moved out of the way of the vehicle and was “not in danger at all” of being struck by the vehicle when he fired the first shot, according to the deputy district attorney, who told jurors that Gonzalez was “trying to kill the driver of that vehicle.”
Rodriguez’s boyfriend, who was driving the car, testified during the trial under an immunity deal with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. Chowdhury testified he was not trying to hit Gonzalez as he sped off.
The prosecutor noted that a teenage high school student who shot one of the cell phone videos testified that the school safety officer was at the side of the car when he fired the first shot and at the back of the car when he fired the second shot.
The prosecutor showed jurors the aftermath of the shooting, including a bullet hole in the vehicle’s rear passenger window and a police trajectory rod through the front passenger seat’s head rest.
Defense attorney Michael Schwartz urged jurors to acquit Gonzalez, telling the panel that “true justice” demands such a verdict.
Schwartz said the case is about what happened within about 1 1/2 seconds after the vehicle’s tires are heard screeching and it began to speed off in a series of videos.
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He said the prosecution had to prove that his client formed the intent during that time to kill someone before firing the shots, telling jurors that it “isn’t about hindsight” or “slow motion.”
Schwartz said his client shot to “stop the threat of deadly force,” noting that two witnesses called by the defense testified that they believed Gonzalez was in danger of being struck by the vehicle if he had not moved out of the way. He said it doesn’t mean his client is guilty of anything if the “threat changed positions” before Gonzalez fired the shots.
“A tragedy took place, not a crime,” Schwartz told jurors.
During the trial, jurors repeatedly saw three videos, including a surveillance video and cell phone videos from two bystanders, in which the vehicle’s tires could be heard screeching before the two shots rang out.
Gonzalez — who is free on bond — did not testify in his own defense. He was fired by the school district a week after the shooting.
Just over a year ago, Rodriguez’s family announced that they reached a $13 million settlement of their lawsuit against the school district in connection with her shooting death.
The lawsuit alleged that Gonzalez did not pass probation when he tried to be hired by the Los Alamitos and Sierra Madre police departments, but he was still hired by the LBUSD, which compounded matters by negligently training him.
The family’s attorneys also argued that Gonzalez violated district policy by shooting into a moving vehicle at a fleeing person.
“I personally don’t really care about the settlement. It’s not bringing back my sister,” Rodriguez’s brother, Omar, said last year. “I don’t want anybody else to go through this pain.”