By Cres Vellucci
It wasn’t a good day for Armani Lee on Monday – Sacramento Superior Court Judge Delbert Oros ruled the 28-year-old must stand trial in March on five felony counts, including three counts of attempted murder of City of Sacramento police officers as the result of a shoot-out on Del Paso Blvd. last February.
The courtroom was crowded with observers, largely members of Black Lives Matter, which has complained that Lee was roughly treated and left to die after being shot six times Feb. 10.
BLM argues Lee, who is Black, was left to “bleed out” after being shot six times, and wasn’t loaded into an ambulance for 30 minutes – Lee’s father was called and told his son had died.
BLM said Armani is being abused in jail by deputies, and has been in solitary confinement for months.
Despite the ruling by Judge Oros after the two-day hearing in which the District Attorney had proven there was enough evidence to go to trial, there were questions about exactly what happened that day – questions that largely cannot be answered via available technology because police dash cams were not activated and officers did not have body cams.
Indeed, officers noted and complained there was a “long list” to get fitted with a body camera, and dash cameras are also few and far between, especially in unmarked vehicles – in fact, the SPD 
deployed a van, a truck, an SUV and a passenger car in the chase of Lee that day, all without dash cameras.
The Defense argued the lack of police identification on the vehicles meant Lee could not have “reasonably known” he was being pursued in the chase by police officers. And, except in one case – a K-9 unit – officers were undercover. Officers testified Lee still must have known who they were because some wore SPD vests and one or two officers “waved” at Lee months earlier on the street.
There was no evidence presented as to which bullets struck Lee, although two officers admitted to firing – Det. Randy VanDusen (who fired 10 times), and K-9 officer Josh Dobson, who testified he was “scared and trapped in my car” when Lee ran directly in front of his police car.
“I saw him running away, waving a gun and I fired,” said Dobson, explaining Lee was past him and running down the street away from him when the 19-year SPD veteran jumped out of the vehicle and fired his weapon several times.
Lee was being staked out Feb. 10 after a Feb. 4 incident in which he allegedly fired into an apartment complex after a disagreement.
The Public Defender’s Office, which represents Lee, decided to not present witnesses at the preliminary stage.
Come see the Vanguard Event – “In Search of Gideon” – which highlights some of the key work performed by the Yolo County Public Defender’s Office…
This was a comment posted on Facebook:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article134263829.html
Funny, but none of that appeared in the article.
This article was on the preliminary hearing that occurred eight months after the above article
The article even predates the release of the video of the shooting
The father was speculating immediately after the incident, before they had video or a lot of facts.