A federal judge has awarded $4.1 million to a couple shot 15 times by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies while the man and woman were homeless and living in a shack.
Angel and Jennifer Lynn Mendez were lying on a futon in a wooden shack in the backyard of a private Lancaster residence in October 2010, when two sheriff’s deputies, Christopher Conley and Jennifer (Pederson) Ballis, entered unannounced, according to court documents.
The deputies were searching for a parolee-at-large, whom they believed to be armed and dangerous, court documents state. The couple alleged in the lawsuit against the sheriff’s department that the deputies had no search warrant.
The deputies entered the 7-feet-by-7-feet shack without knocking and saw a BB gun Angel Mendez kept to shoot rats and other pests, according to the decision signed by U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald.
