It was 7.30pm on 6 June when two LASD deputies drove up to the apartment complex in Willowbrook in south LA, a mile-and-a-half from Twyman’s home in Compton. It was still light out when two deputies got out of the car, with guns pointed at a parked Kia, according to surveillance footage released by the department, which did not include audio.
As the men approached on either side of the vehicle and opened one of the doors, the car appeared to reverse. Both deputies opened fire and continued shooting from a distance as the car rolled. One deputy returned to his vehicle, opened the trunk, grabbed a larger rifle – and continued shooting at the unmoving car in the distance.
Within roughly 30 seconds, the men had fired a total of about 34 rounds at Twyman in the driver’s seat, and a 22-year-old man in the passenger seat.
“They came to assassinate and kill,” said Chiquita, Ryan’s sister, saying she was particularly disturbed by the first five seconds of the video: “Watch the demeanor when they get out the car … They came there with intention to kill. They came there hunting for my brother” (Levin 4-5).
Ryan Twyman was unarmed inside a parked car when two Los Angeles sheriff deputies approached and fired 34 rounds.
Video of the entire incident, which happened in roughly 50 seconds, was as shocking as many police brutality cases that have gone viral in the US. But the killing of the 24-year-old father of three barely made the news.
On that day, his death was far from unique: officers across LA shot five people in five separate incidents in just over 24 hours. Only one person survived. Families and activists said the bloodshed on 6 June provided a terrifying illustration of the culture of police violence and a system that trains officers to kill – while ensuring they won’t face consequences.
“Nobody deserves to be treated like that,” Tommy Twyman, Ryan’s mother, said on a recent afternoon, recounting how her son liked to talk to her on the phone once a day, always a true “mama’s boy”. He loved sheltering dogs and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, she said. “You took something that I’m not gonna ever get back. You robbed me.”
Twyman was one of the more than 500 people who have been killed by on-duty officers in LA county or died in custody since 2013. That’s according to Black Lives Matter LA, which maintains detailed spreadsheets tracking deaths at the hands of local law enforcement (Levin 1).
A summary of the shooting provided to the board by the sheriff’s department indicated that the deputies got a cell phone call June 6, 2019, from a detective who was looking for a suspect in possession of illegal firearms. He gave them Twyman’s name and the car’s license plate number, along with descriptions of both.
Guns had been found at Twyman’s home in April, when he was not at the address, sheriff’s officials told the Los Angeles Times.
On June 6, the deputies went to an apartment complex in the 13100 block of South San Pedro Street about 7:30 p.m. and found Twyman in the driver’s seat of the Kia. Another man was in the passenger seat of the car, which had heavily tinted windows, according to the deputies.
Security video footage released by the department showed the deputies approaching the car with weapons drawn, and one of them opening the rear passenger side door in an attempt to talk with Twyman, who started the car’s engine and put it in reverse.
The other deputy moved in and tried to open the driver’s side door, but the video showed the Kia moving in reverse, knocking the deputy on the passenger side of the car off balance.
“The first deputy feared he would get caught underneath (Twyman’s) moving vehicle and (Twyman) would run him over and kill him, (and) fired his duty weapon five times at (Twyman),” according to the summary.
The second deputy immediately saw a muzzle flash from inside the back seat of the car and yelled, “gun, gun, gun!” before firing 15 shots from his weapon to protect the other deputy, according to the deputies’ account.
The Kia continued in reverse in a looping turn as deputies fired in the direction of Twyman. One deputy then ran back to the patrol vehicle and retrieved an AR-15 duty rifle from the trunk, according to the sheriff’s department.
The video showed both deputies firing additional shots in the direction of the car, which continued in reverse until it hit a metal post in the parking lot.
A total of 34 shots were fired, according to the sheriff’s department.
Ultimately, one of the two deputies reported hearing someone inside the car saying, “He’s dead, he’s dead, I don’t have a gun.”
Twyman was struck by bullets in the neck and upper body and pronounced dead at the scene. [Daimeon] Leffall [the passenger] was not struck by gunfire, but had fragments of glass in his hair and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for evaluation.
The summary faulted the deputy for opening the car’s rear door while trying to detain Twyman and both deputies for not calling for backup, but said Twyman failed to follow the deputies’ commands.
The department submitted its investigation to the District Attorney’s Office to determine whether the use of deadly force was legally justified, and investigations remain underway (Marcellino 2-4).
The department’s incident video narrator said that the deputy was trying to maintain his balance and not get “knocked down and run over” when he and his partner began firing into the car. The deputy — who remained standing throughout — and his partner continued to fire, even after the first officer had gotten out of the way of the car, which continued to slowly reverse until it hit a carport support beam. At this point, the second deputy retrieved a rifle from the trunk of the patrol car and both deputies appeared to fire more rounds at Twyman and Leffall in the Kia.
According to the LASD, Twyman was on probation and was under investigation for possessing guns with a felony on his record. The department had been looking for Twyman to arrest him on the weapons charge after a search of the young man’s house turned up firearms. Twyman wasn’t home at the time of the search.
“At no time during the course of these events” did Twyman or Leffall “pose any reasonable or credible threat of violence” to the deputies, “nor did they do anything to justify the force used against them.” according to the complaint filed by the family’s lawyer, Brian Dunn, of the Cochran Firm California. That force, the complaint alleged, was not only deadly, but also “excessive, unnecessary, and unlawful,” and in violation of the LASD’s policy against shooting into vehicles.
The Twyman family’s legal team also accused the deputies of “deliberate indifference,” by failing to render medical aid to the dying man, writing that “after a significant and appreciable period of time had passed following the shooting, Ryan Twyman died as a direct and proximate result of the gunshot wounds inflicted upon his person” by the defendants.
Twyman’s loved ones were also among a handful of grieving families who, speaking before the board of supervisors last year, reported taunting and intimidation from East LA and Century Station deputies at funerals and public memorials honoring people killed by members of the LASD (Walker 1-2).
“… both deputies fired their service pistols at Mr. Wyman in order to stop the vehicle form seriously injuring the passenger deputy,” said commander April Tardy who narrates the Sheriff Department’s critical incident briefing in a video that includes surveillance footage of the shooting.
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Just hours after the video’s release Ryan Tyman’s family held a press conference at the offices of the Chochran law firm in Hancock Park. They stood at a podium covered in microphones. Members of Tyman’s family spoke along with Daimein Lafell, the passenger who was inside the car when Twyman was killed.
Twyman’s father was one of the first to speak. He said that after watching the critical incident report he believed his son was murdered. Twyman’s older sister Chiquita Twyman also took the podium. “My brother was my brother. He was human. He had a big family and a big support system and a community that loved him regardless of what the media is showing of him,” she said, trying to hold back tears.
Next to speak was Brian Dunn, an attorney who has represented over 200 families in wrongful death suits including some of LA’s most high profile police misconduct cases. Dunn held up a laptop and played the sheriff department’s critical incident report, pausing it at times to explain why he believed the officers had failed to follow proper protocol.
Why did they approach the vehicle with guns drawn, Dunn asked, rather than announce their presence through the squad cars PA system? Why, Dunn said, did they keep firing on the car after it had come to a complete stop on the other side of the parking lot? The LA Sheriff’s Dept has a policy of refraining from firing on moving vehicles except in rare instances.
“By the time this sheriff deputy is no longer in the path of the vehicle there is absolutely no justification whatsoever to continue using deadly force, said Dunn. “They are completely out of harm’s way. But they kept shooting. 34 rounds folks” (Weinberg 1-2)
Los Angeles has consistently ranked as one of America’s deadliest regions for police violence, with one analysis finding that police shoot, on average, one person every five days. The county sheriff’s department (LASD) – which killed Twyman and polices millions of people in the LA area outside of city limits – has a troubled record of brutality claims. Leading the department is Alex Villanueva, the elected sheriff sworn in last year and now mired in scandals, including over his reinstatement of a deputy previously fired for domestic violence and his collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
The FBI is also investigating a secret society of tattooed officers and other “gang-like groups” inside LASD – and whether deputies planted evidence and falsified reports.
“LA county sheriff’s deputies are emboldened by who the sheriff is,” said Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer who helps track killings and works with families. “There are gangs within the sheriff’s department.”
On the streets of black and brown neighborhoods, this culture plays out in the form of harassment, racial profiling and abusive patrolling, critics said. LASD is known for having a “warrior mindset” instead of a “service or guardian mindset” in its treatment of citizens, said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor.
Twyman was a frequent victim of this mentality, his family said.
“We call them the ‘jump out boys’,” said Chiquita Twyman, Ryan’s older sister. In Compton, a south LA city where Ryan lived, residents have grown accustomed to sheriff’s deputies driving around with their doors partially open – so they can jump out at any moment to confront, detain and arrest people on the street, she said.
“I never knew how much a black man could get pulled over until my son became a teenager,” said [Ryan’s mother] Tommy. “It never stopped.”
Charles Twyman, Ryan’s father, said the police harassment “becomes a way of life”, adding: “We’re used to it. They talk about gangs in the inner city. Who is the bigger gang?”
Police even treated Ryan like a criminal when he was once suffering from a seizure, suggesting he was on drugs instead of helping him, she [Tommy] said.
Sometimes, police would stop Ryan and eventually let him go, his mother said, after it became clear they had no reason to arrest him.
But his final encounter with law enforcement was different. It escalated so quickly he had no time for a conversation (Levin 2-3).
The sheriff’s department released the footage with lengthy narration that presented Twyman as a criminal and a threat.
“The vehicle was used as a weapon,” said the commander April Tardy, claiming one of the deputies was “struck” by the car door as Twyman “accelerated” the car in reverse, though in the video, the officer does not appear to be hit or lose his balance. He began firing, the captain continued, to “avoid being knocked down and run over”.
Twyman, who was shot in the upper torso and pronounced dead on the scene, was “under investigation” for illegal possession of weapons, and on probation after a gun possession conviction, Tardy said, adding that the department had been seeking to arrest him. She did not accuse him of any acts of violence. After the deputies finished shooting, they found no weapons in his car.
Letitia Lynex, Twyman’s aunt who lives nearby, rushed to the scene when she got word that something had happened. She said one officer initially told her a “deputy was down” and refused to provide more information, saying: “Google it.” Eventually, a crowd formed, demanding answers, prompting some officers to “draw their guns down on us as if we were criminals”, she said.
Twyman remained lifeless in his car for hours as his relatives showed up trying to figure out what happened. Police have continued to mistreat the family by driving past their house in Compton, stationing themselves outside during a family gathering, and showing up at the funeral, the relatives said.
They were also blindsided by the public release of the video, waking up to the horrifying footage on the news and their social media feeds. Tommy rushed to the bathroom to avoid seeing it as others viewed the final moments of his life.
She still can’t bring herself to watch it (Levin 5-6).
Twyman leaves behind three young children, ages one, two and three. Ryan Jr, the three-year-old, has struggled to process his father’s absence, repeatedly asking: “Where’s my dad?”
Sometimes, he stares at men’s faces around him, wondering if they might be his father. Other times, the toddler asks to go home to “see daddy” in case he’s waiting.
The family designed Twyman’s funeral program to look like a Time magazine cover celebrating him, filled with photos of him with his mother and his children.
“In every picture, you can see how much of a family man he was,” said Charles. “He protected everybody.”
Tommy has an alarm set on her phone that goes off every day at 8pm. It was her reminder to call her son to make sure he had taken his seizure medication. But they also both loved their daily catch-ups on the phone, she said, which sometimes would last an hour.
“If anyone knows Ryan Twyman, they know what 8 o’clock means,” she said, with a smile.
Tommy always worried about losing her son as he got older, afraid they wouldn’t be as close after he moved out of the house, she recalled: “When he turned 21, I told him, ‘I don’t know how to let you go,’ and he told me, ‘You don’t have to let me go. I’m gonna always be your baby.’”
Since his death, she said, she can’t bear to turn off her 8pm alarm (Levin 8-9).
Adocates hope a new landmark law in California, which dictates that police should only use deadly force when “necessary”, will prevent this kind of death in the future. Current standards allow police to use deadly force whenever it’s “reasonable”. The footage suggests the killing was unnecessary, said Joanna Schwartz, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor. “Could it have been avoided? It seems like the answer is yes, in about 50 different ways.”
Departments need to enforce their policies restricting officers from firing at fleeing people, so that they face serious consequences when they violate the rules, added the sociology professor Alex Vitale.
Otherwise, he said, officers would keep killing with impunity – and return to the streets (Levin 7).
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted today to approve a $3.9 million settlement of a federal lawsuit brought by the family of Ryan Twyman, an unarmed 24-year-old Compton man shot to death in his car by sheriff’s deputies in Willowbrook.
The deputies alleged that Twyman tried to use the Kia Forte as a weapon. …
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The plaintiffs — who included Twyman’s three minor sons, his parents and Daimeon Leffall, a passenger in the car — alleged civil rights violations, battery and negligence.
According to the plaintiffs’ court papers, the deputies “violently” confronted Twyman even though he and Leffall were unarmed and not a threat to them. The deputies then opened fire, killing Twyman and injuring Leffall, according to the court papers filed in January.
The plaintiffs alleged the deputies violated an LASD policy that forbids using deadly force against people in a vehicle. That policy states, “Firearms should not be discharged at a stationary or moving vehicle, the occupants of a vehicle, or the tires of a vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is imminently threatening a department member or another person present with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle. The moving vehicle itself shall not presumptively constitute a threat that justifies the use of deadly force,” according to a policy manual posted on the LASD website (Marcellino 1).
Thousands gathered in front of the Hall of Justice on Wednesday for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s weekly protest demanding the removal of L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who the group says has failed to prosecute “killer cops.”
Several family members of people who died at the hands of police spoke at Wednesday’s protest. One of them was Tommy Twyman, the mother of Ryan Twyman — a Black man who died last year when L.A. County Sheriff deputies fired 34 rounds into his vehicle.
“A year later, you see officers beating up people and getting arrested and all of that, but she isn’t doing anything about them murdering people,” Twyman said, likely referring to charges Lacey filed last week against an LAPD officer who was filmed beating a homeless man last month.
Lacey has not filed charges against the two deputies who shot and killed Ryan Twyman.
Black Lives Matter-L.A., led by co-founder Melina Abdullah, has appeared on the Hall of Justice’s front steps to demand Lacey’s resignation since October 2017, but the nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd have propelled the campaign’s momentum to remove Lacey.
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Abdullah and other organizers presented the People’s Budget, Black Lives Matter-L.A.’s proposed city budget, to the city council on Monday. The budget proposes reducing LAPD’s portion of the budget to less than 2%.
The push to defund the police scored a couple of victories on Tuesday, as the L.A. City Council voted 11-3 to cut $150 million from the LAPD’s budget and six council members introduced a motion that would dispatch social workers instead of police to respond to non-violent emergency calls (Torres and Mayorquin 1).
[Paste the following on Google to see the video of the shooting] Video Shows Deputy-Involved-Shooting of Ryan Twyman ...
Works cited:
Levin, Sam T. “Los Angeles Officers Shot at Ryan Twyman 34 Times. He Was One of Four They Killed That Day.” The Guardian, August 15, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/15/police-shootings-los-angeles-sheriffs-department-ryan-twyman
Marcellino, Elizabeth. “L.A. County Votes To Settle Ryan Twyman DIS Shooting for $3.9 Million.” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 12, 2020. Net. https://lasentinel.net/l-a-county-votes-to-settle-ryan-twyman-dis-shooting-for-3-9-million.html
Torres, Chris and Mayorquin, Orlando. “Protests against District Attorney Jackie Lacey Continue; Defund Police Movement Makes Strides.” Daily Sundial, June 17, 2020. Net. https://sundial.csun.edu/158969/black-lives-matter-coverage/protests-against-district-attorney-jackie-lacey-continue-defund-police-movement-makes-strides/
Walker, Taylor. “LA County Supes Approve $3.9 Million Settlement for the Family of Ryan Twyman, after Deputies Shot 34 Bullets into his Car.” Witness LA, November 11, 2020. Net. https://witnessla.com/la-county-supes-approve-3-9-million-settlement-for-the-family-of-ryan-twyman-after-deputies-shot-34-bullets-into-his-car/
Weinberg, David. “Ryan Twyman’s Family Speaks after He Is Killed by LA Sheriff’s Deputies.” KCRW, June 21, 2019. Net. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/kcrw-features/ryan-twymans-family-speaks-after-he-is-killed-by-a-la-sheriffs-deputy
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