A revving engine, screeching tires and gunshots — that’s what jurors heard over and over again Friday inside the courtroom where closing arguments played out in the murder trial of former Long Beach school safety officer Eddie Gonzalez.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys both pounded tables in front of them, mimicking Gonzalez bringing his palm down on the hood of a car attempting to get away from him in a parking lot just north of Millikan High School on that day two and a half years ago.
They implored jurors to put themselves in Gonzalez’s mind, asking them whether a reasonable person, having sidestepped the car and watching it speed away, would have fired two shots from a gun as he did, sending a bullet through the rear passenger-side window, then through a headrest and into the back of 18-year-old Mona Rodriguez‘s skull, fatally injuring her.
Whether Gonzalez, 54, did so out of anger — at being disobeyed, after trying to stop Rodriguez and the driver, her boyfriend Rafeul Chowdhury, having just seen them fighting with a Millikan student in the street — or out of fear, with the car swerving inches away from Gonzalez, is the central question jurors must decide as they try to reach a verdict.
Both sides’ closing arguments wrestled with what drove Gonzalez in making his split-second decision to shoot.
Deputy District Attorney Lee Orquiola compared Gonzalez’s actions to a batter facing a pitcher in baseball.
“If the pitcher throws the ball at the batter’s head, what do they do? They react — they get out of the way,” Qrquiola said. “They don’t dodge it, then try to hit the ball again.
“The defendant put himself in the batter’s box,” he said. “When that car swerved, (Gonzalez) got out of the way. But what did he do? He tried to hit the ball again.”
But Gonzalez’s job as a school safety officer required him to try to stop the car, his attorney Michael Schwartz said. Gonzalez had just seen Rodriguez and Chowdhury “beat up and rob” Sabrina Ramos, then about 16 years old.
When Chowdhury screeched his car’s tires with Gonzalez still in front of him, Gonzalez reacted swiftly to what he thought was a threat on his life, Schwartz said.
“This didn’t happen in slow motion,” he said. “Life doesn’t happen in slow motion.”
Schwartz played video of the shooting over and over in court through about a week of testimony. On Friday, he played the video and audio again for the jury, the sound of the screeching tires piercing the otherwise silent courtroom.
“Everybody in here jumped — you’re not expecting it,” Schwartz said, asking the jury to experience what Gonzalez did. “They’re about to run me over, and I’m dead.”
Gonzalez faces one count of second-degree murder for killing Rodriguez. The jury will also consider a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter against Gonzalez.
The jury deliberated for about three hours on Friday before they were dismissed for the week. Deliberations will resume on Monday, April 15.
Gonzalez — who is free on bond – was fired by the school district a week after the shooting.
Just over a year ago, Rodriguez’s family announced that they reached a $13 million settlement of their lawsuit against the school district in connection with her shooting death.
The lawsuit alleged that Gonzalez did not pass probation when he tried to be hired by the Los Alamitos and Sierra Madre police departments, but that he was still hired by the LBUSD, which compounded matters by negligently training him.
The family’s attorneys also argued that Gonzalez violated district policy by shooting into a moving vehicle at a fleeing person.
“I personally don’t really care about the settlement. It’s not bringing back my sister,” Rodriguez’s brother, Omar, said last year. “I don’t want anybody else to go through this pain.”
City News Service contributed to this story.