Search fatalities

Kenneth Vessell

Age : 36

Gender : Male

Race : Black

Date : 08/25/2021

Location : 100 block West Torrance Boulevard

City : Redondo Beach

County : Los Angeles

State : California

Agency : Redondo Beach Police Department

Officer(s) :Joseph Rangel; Christopher Bushman; Lauren McNeely; Angelica Chaires

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during active shooter incident at Redondo Beach Pier

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 08/25/2021, at approximately 8:20 p.m., Redondo Beach Police Department officers responded to numerous 911 calls reporting a man firing a handgun at people at the Redondo Beach Pier. The man was later identified as 36-year-old Kenneth Vessell Jr. Witnesses described people running from the pier and taking shelter inside nearby restaurants and businesses. Police found a teenage boy with a gunshot wound to his lower torso and a man in his 70s who had been shot in the upper torso. Both survived.
Police alleged Vessell had approached people on the pier and fired apparently at random. After shooting the two victims, Vessell moved through the pier complex while carrying a semiautomatic handgun and a large knife. Witnesses reported seeing him go over a railing toward the rocks beneath or alongside the pier as police converged on the area.
A later Los Angeles County District Attorney investigation provides considerably more information than the initial news coverage. The four Redondo Beach officers who opened fire were Joseph Rangel, Christopher Bushman, Lauren McNeely and Angelica Chaires. The DA's review states that all four fired their duty weapons at Vessell. The officer names therefore can be removed from the "Not Disclosed" category in the original record.
The shooting was investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau rather than solely by Redondo Beach police. The Sheriff's Department submitted its investigative materials to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Justice System Integrity Division on 06/24/2022. The evidence reviewed by prosecutors included recorded interviews, photographs, video recordings, body-worn-camera footage and police radio communications.
Significantly, Rangel, Bushman, McNeely and Chaires all declined to give voluntary statements to investigators about their shooting of Vessell. The District Attorney reported that no compelled statements from the officers were considered in its criminal review.
The District Attorney's Justice System Integrity Division subsequently reviewed the actions of each of the four officers. On 08/10/2023, nearly two years after Vessell was killed, prosecutors issued their final shooting memorandum. The DA concluded that the evidence supported a reasonable belief that Rangel, Bushman, McNeely and Chaires used deadly force in self-defense and/or defense of others. No criminal charges were filed against any of them.
The DA memorandum identifies the police case as Redondo Beach Police Department file 21-5061, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department file 021-00094-3199-013, and Justice System Integrity Division file 21-0354. Those case numbers provide additional routes for obtaining the underlying investigative records, including body-camera recordings, radio traffic, shooting reports, photographs and officer records.
A search for subsequent publicly indexed records did not establish another fatal police shooting involving Rangel, Bushman, McNeely or Chaires that can presently be attributed to any of them with confidence. The search did, however, locate substantial federal civil-rights litigation involving other Redondo Beach officers, including a case arising from a 2019 police shooting in which a federal judge found factual disputes significant enough to deny officers' request for summary judgment. That litigation involved officers Ryan Crespin and Patrick Knox and Sgt. Mark Valdivia, not the four officers who killed Vessell.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/2-wounded-shooting-redondo-beach-pier-gunman-killed-by-police/
https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/southern-california/public-safety/2021/09/02/gunman-in-redondo-pier-shooting-identified
https://lbpost.com/news/long-beach-gunman-redondo-pier/
https://patch.com/california/redondobeach/authorities-identify-redondo-beach-pier-shooter
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/police-respond-to-shooting-on-redondo-beach-pier/
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-25/shooting-at-redondo-beach-pier
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-26/redondo-beach-pier-shooting-was-random-attack-police-say
https://www.foxla.com/news/redondo-beach-pier-active-shooter-two-people-shot
https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/JSID-OIS-08-10-23-Vessell-Jr.pdf