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The parents of the 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy shot dead by a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Monday and laid out the findings of their own private investigation into the shooting, which they claim was unjustified. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the parents of Andy Lopez, accuses Deputy Erick Gelhaus of acting recklessly when he shot Lopez seven times as the boy walked through a southwest Santa Rosa neighborhood with an airsoft BB gun that resembled an AK-47 assault rifle. The lawsuit also faults the Sheriff's Office, accusing it...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The parents of a 13-year-old California boy killed last month while carrying a plastic replica of an assault rifle filed a civil rights lawsuit on Monday against the sheriff's deputy who shot him ... Deputy Erick Gelhaus, 48, shot Andy Lopez Cruz as the eighth grader was walking near his home in the wine-country town of Santa Rosa carrying an imitation gun he planned to return to a friend, relatives and officials have said..... On Monday, attorney Arnoldo Casillas filed the federal lawsuit against Gelhaus and Sonoma County in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on...

The parents of a 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy killed by a sheriff's deputy who thought the airsoft rifle he was carrying was real, plan to file a federal lawsuit in San Francisco on Monday, claiming the deputy who shot their son violated the boy's Fourth Amendment rights as they pertain to limits on police authority..... The Fourth Amendment states that citizens have the right to be secure against unreasonalbe searches and seizures. In an interview with NBC Bay Area on Monday morning, he said he will also allege that Gelhaus has been involved in prior instances of "excessive force" and...

Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun on a driver during traffic stop two months earlier A driver has come forward saying the deputy who shot dead a 13-year-old California boy after mistaking his fake AK-47 as real pulled a gun on him also, after he failed to signal a lane change during a carpool. Jeff Westbrook, 57, of Santa Rosa said he was mistreated by Deputy Erick Gelhaus after being pulled over Aug. 21 in Cotati, so much so that at one...

Lawyers for the family of a 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy carrying a replica rifle and killed by a deputy when he said the teen wouldn’t put it down, have filed three claims against Sonoma County and plan to file a federal lawsuit in the wake of the boy’s death. In the claims, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the firm of Moreno, Becerra and Casillas, based in Montebello, Calif., allege that the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office failed to develop proper policies and training for pedestrian stops, and that it negligently hired and continued to employ the deputies involved in...

[...] [P]aramedic Aram Bronston, 43, of Santa Rosa said that his “heart sank” when a friend told him the deputy involved in the shooting was [Deputy Erick] Gelhaus.... [...] About eight years ago, Bronston was struggling on the shoulder of Highway 101 in south Santa Rosa with a woman who was distraught over her brother's death and became “verbally and physically abusive.” [...] Gelhaus drove up to the scene as the woman began running into traffic, pulling Bronston with her, he said. Gelhaus “grabbed me by my shirt — with cars literally two inches from hitting me — and pulled...

The FBI is not conducting a full, independent investigation into the death of a teenage boy who was shot by a sheriff's deputy last week, but instead offering local police “support,” several local law enforcement leaders said this week. The stance is an apparent reversal from the bureau's notice last week, when its agents told command staff at the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and Santa Rosa Police Department that the agency would conduct its own investigation of the Oct. 22 shooting death of Andy Lopez, looking for potential violations of federal civil rights laws. [...] The FBI's role in the...

As a large wooden shrine sprung up Friday in the southwest Santa Rosa lot where a sheriff's deputy killed Andy Lopez last week, an attorney for the teen's family outlined the framework of a federal civil rights lawsuit the family intends to file next week. Arnoldo Casillas, the attorney representing the Lopez family, said the Oct. 22 shooting was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourth Amendment's limits on police authority. The family will file a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco contending that Deputy Erick Gelhaus shot Lopez “without reasonable cause,” Casillas said in a statement. The...

Andy Lopez Cruz, age 13. On Oct. 22, Lopez was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy on Moorland Avenue in southwest Santa Rosa. The boy was carrying an airsoft BB gun designed to look like an AK-47 assault rifle, and police investigating the shooting said the deputy mistook the gun for a real weapon. Lopez's parents stood before the altar, next to their son's closed coffin, which was covered in white fabric. For the duration of the service, the boy's mother, Sujey Lopez, lay her arms over the coffin with her head against it. The boy's father, Rodrigo Lopez,...