A teenager who witnessed his friend being fatally shot by a Los Angeles motorcycle officer offered a dramatically different account of the encounter than police Friday, saying the man was killed while trying to surrender and wasn't carrying anything in his hands.
A police official overseeing the shooting investigation confirmed that the teenager gave investigators a similar account, but said detectives believe he is lying. Two bystanders saw the suspect approach officers with an object in his hand, according to the official.
The object, which turned out to be a 24-inch metal microphone stand, was recovered at the scene, police said.
"There is absolutely no credence to any part of his story," said Capt. Kris Pitcher, head of the Los Angeles Police Department's Force Investigation Division. "It is absolutely untrue."
Investigators, however, have refused to confirm an earlier account by police that the man, Byron San Jose, 25, had come at officers swinging the microphone stand when he was shot Wednesday evening by LAPD Officer Derek Mousseau after a brief car chase. That issue, among many other details of the incident that unfolded along Valerio Street in Van Nuys, remains under investigation, Pitcher said.
Meanwhile Friday, San Jose's family mourned the loss of a son and brother, remembering a young man with dreams of becoming a hip-hop artist. San Jose's mother tearfully recalled how her son promised to buy her a mansion once he made it in the music business.
"My son was not an animal. He was a human being," said Maria San Jose. "He was worth something. He was not the person they're saying he was. He had dreams."
Family members, who acknowledged that San Jose was convicted last year of possessing a loaded handgun, were at a loss to reconcile the police account with the statements of San Jose's friend, Jose Torres.
Torres, 16, who witnessed the shooting through the rear window of the car, said in an interview with The Times that his friend had nothing in his hands when he got out of the vehicle and that the microphone stand was in the back seat at the time of the shooting.
"He raised his hands up in the air. I saw they were empty," Torres said.
The incident began shortly after 7 p.m. when Mousseau and his partner tried to pull over a 1993 Saturn sedan.
Police had initially reported that the two officers made the stop believing the car was stolen, but later changed that, saying that the driver had committed an unspecified moving violation.
