Family can sue Sonoma County and deputy who shot 13-year-old boy

The family of Andy Lopez, the 13-year-old boy fatally shot by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy in October 2013 while holding a toy rifle, can take their wrongful-death suit to a jury, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Lawyers for the county and sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus argued that the suit should be dismissed because Gelhaus believed the toy was an AK-47 assault rifle and reasonably feared for his life when the youngster turned around and started to raise the gun.

[...] U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton of Oakland said there was no evidence that Andy was pointing the gun at the officer, made any “sudden movement” toward the weapon or was acting aggressively before he was shot.

The officers stopped their patrol car 35 to 40 feet away from Andy, and, according to their account of the incident, Gelhaus shouted at him to drop the gun.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that “the mere possession of a weapon is not sufficient to justify the use of deadly force,” Hamilton said.

Gelhaus, a sheriff’s deputy since 1989, was briefly suspended with pay but returned to patrol after the county district attorney declined to file criminal charges against him.

Hamilton’s ruling refutes “all claims that Deputy Gelhaus was anything but a well-trained, experienced, professional law officer,” said Steven Mitchell, a lawyer for the deputy and the county.