Vanguard News Desk Editor
SUNNYVALE, CA – A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed this week by the family of a teen who called 911 during a mental health crisis, and then was gunned down by a Sunnyvale Dept. of Public Safety officer in March of 2024, according to the lawsuit announced Wednesday.
The pleading claims the officer, “instead of relying on his training or using any of the less-lethal at his disposal,” shot Emmanuel Perez Becerra,19, dead.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, by the teen’s parents, lists the City of Sunnyvale, Public Safety Officer Kevin Lemos, and others for wrongful death, excessive force, negligence, battery and loss of familial association.
“This civil rights lawsuit is a tragic illustration of what law enforcement should not do when confronting a person experiencing a mental health crisis: confront, provoke and use lethal force
as a first resort,” according to the filing.
The pleading charged “the SDPS officers involved not only failed to follow their training; they failed to adhere to the requirements of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution—which, if followed, would have spared Emmanuel his life, and spared Emmanuel’s parents the agony of losing their son at the age of 19.”
Becerra, the plaintiffs claim, “struggled with his mental health since the Covid 19 pandemic,” and someone called 911 to “report that a man was walking with a knife through the mobile home park where he lived. Officers arrived to find the teen walking calmly through the empty streets of his neighborhood, naked from the waist down, holding a kitchen knife. He never threatened anyone, or any of the responding officers, with the knife and never charged at anyone.”
When officers arrived, the lawsuit alleges, one officer ordered the teen to drop the knife as the victim walked away from the officers. But when the teen turned to the officers, the first officer, “abruptly fired two shots into his chest from at least 20 feet away, in violation of his training.” Becerra died about an hour later in a local hospital as a result of the gunshot wounds.
“The officer had a Taser. He had pepper spray. He had a baton,” said civil rights attorney Adanté Pointer, of Oakland’s Pointer & Buelna, Lawyers for the People, adding in a statement, “He never attempted to deescalate the situation, or to use non-lethal force, or to use any other method that might have avoided this needless loss of a young man’s life.”
The suit noted, the teen passed officers in “SDPS Vehicle 2 and the officers inside the vehicle—apparently unthreatened—did not use any type of force or issue orders.”
But defendant Lemos stalked Becerra, and eventually, the suit alleges, shot the teen, although he didn’t pose an immediate threat.
Those actions were “egregious, outrageous and shock the conscience; and/or were committed with oppression and/or malice; and/or were despicable and perpetrated with a willful and conscious disregard for Emmanuel’s safety, health and wellbeing,” according to the filing’s language.
“Emmanuel had his whole life ahead of him. What happened to Emmanuel underscores why law enforcement should never respond to an individual in a mental health crisis by provoking and escalating the situation, and then immediately using deadly force as a first resort,” said Michael Slater, of Pointer & Buelna.
“Instead of receiving the help he was literally calling out for, Emmanuel was met with lethal violence by those from whom he was asking for help and protection. The results are heartbreaking and felt by his mother and father in ways that are immeasurable,” added Slater.
