More details emerge on girl fatally shot by LA police while in clothing store

The coroner's office has identified the 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police Thursday when officers fired on an assault suspect.

The coroner’s office has identified the 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police Thursday when officers fired on an assault suspect and a bullet went through the wall and struck the girl as she was in a clothing store dressing room.

Police also fatally shot the suspect Thursday morning at a Burlington store in the North Hollywood area of the San Fernando Valley, police said.

The Los Angeles County coroner identified the girl as Valentina Orellana-Peralta. The suspect’s name has not yet been released.

LAPD officers have shot at least 36 people — 17 of them fatally — in 2021, according to the Los Angeles Times. Those figures mark a dramatic rise in cases where officers shot or killed people in either of the last two years — 27 people were shot and 7 of them killed by LA police in all of 2020. In 2019, officers shot 26 people, killing 12.

In the last week, LA officers have killed four people, including two men in separate incidents on Saturday, the newspaper reported.

On Thursday, witnesses in North Hollywood told KCBS-TV that the man began acting erratically, threatening to throw items from the upper floor, and he attacked a woman with a bicycle lock shortly before noon as the store was crowded with holiday shoppers.

Officers answered a report of an assault and others of shots being fired, police said. Investigators have not found a gun at the scene.

The suspect was shot and died at the store but one of the bullets went through drywall behind the man and killed the girl, who was in a changing room with her mother, police said.