California school safety officer pleads no contest to manslaughter in fatal shooting of 18-year-old

CNN
—

A former California school security guard has pleaded guilty to manslaughter nearly three years after being charged with murder in the shooting death of an 18-year-old woman as she tried to flee a physical altercation, officials said Tuesday.

Eddie Gonzalez's sentencing is scheduled for October 8. He faces either three or six years in prison, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said. Spokeswoman Pamela J. Johnson told CNN.

The confession comes about four months after Gonzalez's murder trial was declared a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict.

Gonzalez was patrolling near Millikan High School in Long Beach on Sept. 27, 2021, when he noticed a fight between Manuela Rodriguez, 18, and a 15-year-old girl, police said. As Rodriguez and two others attempted to flee the scene in a nearby vehicle, the school security officer allegedly fired his handgun into the sedan, hitting Rodriguez, who was sitting in the passenger seat, police said.

Rodriguez was taken to a hospital and died of her injuries about a week later, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said. She left behind a five-month-old son.

Gonzalez was fired soon after for violating the county's use-of-force policy, which requires officers not to shoot at a fleeing person, a moving vehicle or through a vehicle window unless “the circumstances clearly justify the use of a firearm as a last resort of defense,” the policy states. A month after the shooting, he was charged with murder.

“We must hold accountable the people we have trusted to protect us,” Gascon said of the charges. “This is especially true of the armed forces we have traditionally relied on to protect our children on their way to and from school.”

Last year, Rodriguez's family agreed to a $13 million settlement in their civil case with the Long Beach Unified School District. The Long Beach Unified School District said the settlement was not an “admission of liability.”

“I don't know how to go on, how I am here, how to go on without my little girl. She meant everything to me,” her mother Manuela Sahagun said at the time. “All I want is justice – justice for my little girl.”

In April, seven jurors wanted to convict Gonzalez of murder, while five jurors wanted to convict him of manslaughter, a less serious offense, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office told CNN.

CNN has contacted Gonzalez's attorney for comment.

Gonzalez's trial comes amid a debate in U.S. school districts over whether armed police should be present in schools. Some say the presence of officers helps protect students from gun violence, while others worry about police misconduct and accelerating the path from school to prison.

To prevent school shootings in California, a bill was introduced earlier this year, but failed to pass, that would require K-12 schools across the state to have at least one armed police officer. Currently, California law allows school districts to decide for themselves whether to hire or contract armed police officers or unarmed security guards.

Others have launched local campaigns in California school districts to remove school police, which they say are much more likely to target black and Latino students.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California released a report in 2021 warning that more police officers in public schools could have a detrimental impact on students. The study found that Latino students' arrest rates were 6.9 times higher and black students' arrest rates were 7.4 times higher in schools with assigned police officers than in schools without. It also found that the groups were more likely to be referred to the police.

A report released in July by the National Center for Education Statistics found that about 45 percent of public schools in the United States have sworn police officers who regularly carry a firearm.