JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

If you haven’t seen the extensive video from the police shooting of the 24-year-old man who was viciously attacking a woman with a bike lock on a cable, you need to.

It is at first mesmerizing, as we watch Daniel Elena Lopez attack three women with a cable bike lock in a Burlington store in North Hollywood, CA. And then it turns gripping and jolting, as about a dozen police officers arrive, move in on Lopez and an officer with a rifle shoots him in an aisle where he has just left a woman bloody after repeatedly assailing her with the lock.

We see the chaos as officers work in close quarters, with limited visibility and a tight line of fire. We hear the loud report from three shots, and we see Lopez go down and police rush in and turn him over.

We also hear muffled cries and screams in the background. Blood curdling screams, even though muffled. What we don’t see is the woman who is screaming and her daughter, both of whom had sought refuge behind a fitting-room door, perfectly and tragically aligned with the police shooter and Lopez’ body.

The woman, Soledad Peralta, is shrieking, because her 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who had been in the U.S. less than a year, has just been struck in the chest by one of the bullets the officer fired.

Moments after the shooting, police opened the dressing-room door and found Valentina dead in her mother’s arms.

Lopez was also shot in the chest, and he too died, but he immediately became an afterthought.

And now we are embroiled, once again, in a questionable police shooting in which an innocent victim died.

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As I said, this is gripping video. The action unfolds slowly, until the climax, and we see it all from two vantage points — surveillance cameras on the first and second floors of the store and also from police body cameras.

To its credit, LAPD released the body-cam footage four days after the Dec. 23 incident, and viewers can judge for themselves whether the officer, who has not been identified, shot too quickly or needed to shoot at all.

The police department had received conflicting reports about whether the assailant was armed with a gun, but it is clear from the video that the officers went in expecting the worst. Understandably, tension abounded, and the officers proceeded methodically but warily as they advanced up an escalator to the area where Lopez was beating the woman, who was later taken to a hospital with injuries to the head and other parts of her body.

An officer accompanying the officer who ultimately fired can be seen pushing the barrel down as the two officers approach. One or more other officers can be heard saying, “Slow down, slow down.” The tension escalates with every step. An officer yells, “Hey, she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding,” and then we see the assault victim lying on the floor at the near end of an aisle, her blood on the floor.

At the other end of the aisle is Lopez, who starts to move to get out of the line of fire. Too late. We’re looking down the barrel, and it’s bang, bang, bang…Lopez down.

A freeze frame from the video homes in on the bike lock, on the floor next to Lopez. Yes, he had a weapon, and, yes, he had just hurt a woman. The question is: Did the officer need to shoot? Lopez’ arms were at his side and the woman was out of harm’s way, lying just below the officer with the rifle.

The police department said it believes Valentina was struck with a bullet that skipped off the floor and pierced the dressing room door.

I’m skeptical about the bullet-off-the-floor theory. That could be an attempt to mitigate the tragedy. Both Valentina and Lopez were shot in the chest. It would have been odd, indeed, if one of the three bullets had hit the floor while another bore through the air chest high. This officer was obviously a crack shot, and those three bullets almost certainly traveled in close proximity.

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One of the most interesting things about the video, to me, was watching the reactions of people coming in and out of the store and passing by Lopez before the shooting. For several minutes, his bike partly blocked access to the down escalator, and he circled around idly, holding the bike lock, looking agitated and irritated.

At least twice while standing at the top of the escalator, he picked up the bike and raised it to head level as if he was considering tossing it over the railing. On the video, we see people entering the store below. Some of them look up and do double takes at the sight of this guy holding up a bike, looking as though he might be preparing to toss it down.

Most of the people who enter the store continue on to the first floor, focused on their shopping intentions. But there’s one woman — one woman in particular — who reacts differently. Immediately upon entering, she espies Lopez on the second floor, holding up the bike. She stops and gazes. She goes on. She stops and assesses again and goes a few more steps. Then, as she passes the foot of the escalator, having gone about 50 feet, she turns around and looks one more time.

She’s had enough. Instinct tells her something very weird, something potentially dangerous, is afoot. She heads back to the door, looks up one more time, pauses and melts away.

…I’ve got my 2022 resolution. I’m going to try to be as alert and on guard as that woman was in the Burlington store two days before Christmas.

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Now here’s the 35-minute, LAPD video that includes 911 calls, police radio audio, body-cam footage from responding officers and in-store video.