The Los Angeles police department has released disturbing dash-cam footage of its officers weaving in and out of traffic before fatally striking a skateboarder.
The video of the 19 September collision shows an LAPD cruiser, with its sirens on at around 7.15pm, at times driving on the wrong side of the road to get past cars. While the driver and another officer appeared to be engaged in a casual conversation, they drifted from the correct side of the street into a center lane, at which point the skateboarder appeared in view.
Gerardo “Jerry” Estrada, 30, appeared to be heading in the direction of the officers and was quickly hit head-on by the car and later pronounced dead at the scene. His family told ABC7 after the incident that he was on his way home from work.
The patrol officers were responding to a call to help set up a perimeter while the department searched for a person with a felony warrant, Capt Mike Bland, an LAPD spokesperson, said in a briefing. The collision happened on Figueroa Street, a busy thoroughfare in the Highland Park neighborhood, and a carnival was happening in the area at the time.
The dash-cam footage captured one of the officers in the vehicle shouting: “Watch out! Look out!” just before the car collided with Estrada. Estrada appeared to raise his hand and attempt to move out of the way in the moment before he was struck.
“Oh shit, oh fuck!” one of the officers shouted immediately after the crash, the video showed. Body-camera footage showed the officer calling for an ambulance, saying: “Male, not conscious, not breathing.”
Onlookers can be heard in the video immediately shouting at police to help the victim, some shouting: “What the fuck is wrong with you?”, “What the fuck are you doing?” and “Do something! There’s somebody fucking dying.”
Bland said the officers rendered aid, and that the investigation was ongoing and would take months.
LAPD spokespeople did not respond to inquiries about the identities of the officers and how fast the vehicle was going at the time of the crash. It was also unclear at the moment of the collision why the vehicle was moving out of the correct, righthand lanes given that there were no visible cars on that side of the road.
Estrada’s family and other community members mourned the loss and called for the officers to be held accountable for his death.
“He was a great person, a great son, brother, uncle,” Rosa Cazares, Estrada’s mother, told ABC7. “He was good to us … always happy.”
Alberto Cazares, Estrada’s brother, told the station: “We want justice. We want them to take responsibility for what they did … To kill him on impact, in front of a carnival. They were speeding. What if it was a couple of kids crossing the street?”
Estrada was a graduate of Santa Monica College, and a GoFundMe raising money for his family said he had a “passion for film and media”, adding: “Jerry was a kind-hearted soul who was always willing to help anyone. He was full of love, and he was deeply loved in return.” He worked for years at Wurstküche, a beer garden in LA’s arts district.
A San Francisco Chronicle investigation last year found that more than 3,300 people were killed as a result of police chases across the country from 2017 to 2022. LAPD has also faced backlash in recent months over its use of force, with department officials grilled by oversight commissioners in September after officers shot at people three days in a row.
