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Brandon Anthony Lopez

Age : 34

Gender : Male

Race : Latino/a/e

Date : 09/28/2021

Location : N Bristol Street and W Santa Ana Boulevard

City : Santa Ana

County : Orange

State : California

Agency : Anaheim Police Department; Santa Ana Police Department

Officer(s) :Catalin Panov; Paul Delgado; Brett Heitmann; Kenneth Weber

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during vehicle pursuit, barricade and mental health crisis

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/28/2021, Anaheim Police Officers Catalin Panov, Paul Delgado, Brett Heitmann and Kenneth Weber shot and killed 33-year-old Brandon Lopez following a vehicle pursuit and nearly four-hour barricade in Santa Ana. Lopez was unarmed and experiencing a mental health crisis.
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Anaheim police began pursuing Lopez after officers located him driving a Chevrolet pickup truck that had been reported stolen. Police also knew he had three outstanding warrants, including warrants involving armed robbery and domestic violence. The pursuit continued for approximately 35 minutes through Tustin, Irvine and Santa Ana before the truck became immobilized on streetcar tracks under construction near Santa Ana Boulevard.
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Lopez remained inside the vehicle for hours while Santa Ana and Anaheim police attempted to persuade him to surrender. His family informed police that he was experiencing a mental health crisis and reportedly wanted police to kill him. Lopez's cousin, Santa Ana City Councilman Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, and other family members were at the scene and wanted an opportunity to communicate with him.
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During the standoff, a Santa Ana officer monitoring Lopez from an armored vehicle reported that Lopez appeared to have a handgun. That information was relayed to Anaheim officers and became critically important to their tactical decisions. No gun was ultimately found.
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Less than an hour before the shooting, Anaheim police assumed command of the barricade from Santa Ana police. Rather than continuing to wait, Anaheim SWAT decided to force Lopez from the vehicle. Officers deployed a chemical agent and flash-bang device into the truck.
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Lopez emerged within seconds. Officers shouted commands and then yelled that he had a gun. Panov, Delgado, Heitmann and Weber opened fire. The four officers collectively fired 22 rounds, killing Lopez.
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Lopez did not have a gun. The object officers perceived as a firearm was an empty plastic water bottle inside a small black Guess bag. Police subsequently found a knife and drug paraphernalia inside the vehicle, but neither was the object the officers said caused them to fire.
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The California Department of Justice independently investigated the shooting because Lopez was unarmed. DOJ subsequently concluded in November 2023 that prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the four officers acted without an intent to defend themselves or others from what they reasonably perceived as an imminent threat. DOJ therefore declined criminal charges.
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The DOJ nevertheless identified significant problems with the tactical handling of the encounter. It questioned Anaheim's decision to escalate an otherwise contained situation by deploying flash-bangs and chemical agents and recommended that the department develop additional guidelines, criteria and training addressing when police should initiate a confrontation in a controlled scene. DOJ also made recommendations concerning body-camera equipment and compliance.
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Lopez's family forcefully contested the police handling of the encounter. Hernandez, who watched the operation unfold, said police knew Lopez was experiencing a mental health crisis yet unnecessarily escalated the situation. Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento compared the Anaheim officers' actions to a “firing squad” and questioned why police provoked a confrontation by deploying the flash-bang after having hours to pursue other options.
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Family attorneys likewise questioned why police would use a device capable of causing temporary blindness, hearing impairment and disorientation and then shoot Lopez within seconds of his emergence. They argued that officers had ample time to use Lopez's family or mental health personnel to help de-escalate the encounter.
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The family pursued civil action, initially filing a claim alleging excessive and unreasonable force and later suing Anaheim. In June 2024, Anaheim agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit brought on behalf of Lopez's four children.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
All four shooters were eventually publicly identified as Catalin Panov, Paul Delgado, Brett Heitmann and Kenneth Weber. A later Los Angeles Times investigation found that several of the officers had substantial prior shooting histories.
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Paul Delgado had been involved in at least three previous police shootings before killing Lopez. In 2018, Delgado and another Anaheim detective shot Kenneth Yamashita-Magarro after police mistakenly believed Yamashita-Magarro was the person they had been surveilling. Police pursued him by vehicle and on foot and alleged that he reached toward his waistband. No gun was found on him. Yamashita-Magarro was shot in the chest, leg and lower back and was left paralyzed from the waist down. Prosecutors later declined criminal charges against the officers.
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Delgado had also participated in the 2014 fatal shooting of Robert Moreno, who was shot 23 times by three Anaheim officers after police alleged Moreno shot a police dog and fired at officers. Delgado additionally participated in the 2008 nonfatal shooting of Jose Francisco Rodriguez following another vehicle pursuit. Police alleged Rodriguez pointed a shotgun at officers before they fired.
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Catalin Panov had participated in at least two previous fatal police shootings before killing Lopez. In 2008, Panov and another officer shot and killed David Abrams on the 91 Freeway following a pursuit. Two civilian women caught in the officers' line of fire sued Anaheim after one of them was struck by police bullets in the abdomen, hand, back and shoulder. Anaheim settled their case for $300,000.
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Panov also participated in the 2014 fatal shooting of Steen Parker following another hours-long barricade. Police used pepper balls and gas against Parker before the confrontation escalated into gunfire. Panov fired an entire magazine during that shooting.
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Brett Heitmann had been present during at least two earlier fatal Anaheim police shootings, although he did not fire in either. Heitmann was Officer Nick Bennallack's partner when Bennallack shot and killed unarmed Manuel Angel Diaz in 2012. Diaz was running away when police pursued him into an apartment courtyard. A federal civil jury later concluded that Bennallack used excessive force in killing Diaz.
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Heitmann was also Bennallack's partner when Bennallack killed Bernie Villegas in 2012 after mistaking a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun for a shotgun. Thus, before Lopez's killing, Heitmann had already twice been present when his partner fatally shot someone, including one case ultimately found by a federal jury to involve excessive force.
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The officers' histories fit a larger documented pattern within the Anaheim Police Department. A 2017 ACLU of Southern California investigation found that Anaheim police had killed 33 people during arrests between 2003 and 2016 and that the department's rate of arrest-related deaths exceeded those of numerous much larger departments. The report found that nearly 40% of people killed by Anaheim police were unarmed and that Latino and Black residents were disproportionately represented.
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Particularly relevant to Lopez's case, the ACLU found that 55% of Anaheim's arrest-related deaths involved officers who had also been involved in another death and called for an early-warning system to identify repeat shooters. The organization also criticized Anaheim's deadly-force policies and called for stronger de-escalation requirements, independent civilian oversight and greater transparency.
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Those longstanding concerns became unusually concrete in Lopez's shooting: four officers fired 22 rounds at an unarmed man during a known mental health crisis, and at least two of the shooters had already participated in multiple police shootings. Police had hours to manage a contained scene before Anaheim SWAT deliberately escalated it with chemical agents and a flash-bang. The object officers perceived as a gun was an empty water bottle inside a small black bag.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-29/anaheim-police-shooting-brandon-lopez
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/09/29/man-killed-in-anaheim-officer-involved-shooting-identified/
https://abc7.com/anaheim-police-shooting-santa-ana-brandon-lopez/11049274/
https://voiceofoc.org/2021/10/family-of-brandon-lopez-killed-by-anaheim-police-files-claim/
https://voiceofoc.org/2021/09/santa-ana-councilman-watches-police-kill-cousin-he-said-had-mental-health-crisis/
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/california-department-justice-releases-report-officer-involved-shooting-brandon
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/ois/report/2023_11_Lopez_AB1506_Report.pdf
https://www.ocregister.com/2023/11/01/state-department-of-justice-clears-anaheim-officers-in-2021-shooting-of-brandon-lopez/
https://www.ocregister.com/2024/06/07/city-of-anaheim-to-pay-5-8-million-in-lawsuit-over-death-of-brandon-lopez/
https://voiceofoc.org/2024/06/anaheim-pays-out-nearly-6-million-to-settle-brandon-lopez-shooting-lawsuit/
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-05/anaheim-police-officers-who-killed-councilmans-cousin-have-a-history-of-fatal-shootings
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-18/police-mistook-bottle-in-bag-for-gun-in-fatal-anaheim-shooting
https://www.aclusocal.org/publications/anaheim-police-department-use-force-report-2017/
https://www.aclusocal.org/press-releases/aclu-releases-report-excessive-force-used-anaheim-police/