The school safety officer who fatally shot an 18-year-old woman in Long Beach a month ago was charged with murder on Wednesday, Oct. 27, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said.
Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez of Long Beach was shot in the head by the safety officer, Eddie F. Gonzalez, on the afternoon of Sept. 27 about a block from Millikan High School, authorities said.
On Wednesday, Gonzalez, 51, was arrested by homicide detectives, Long Beach police Chief Robert Luna said, and being held at the Long Beach City Jail on $2 million bail.
Gonzalez was charged with murder, with the degree of that charge to be determined at a later date, a District Attorney’s Office representative said. His first court appearance is scheduled for Friday.
“It’s complex, because there were many witnesses, many videos,” Gascón said during a downtown Los Angeles press conference. “But the videos only tell a part of the story so we have to go beyond that, that’s the work the Long Beach Police Department did.”
Rodriguez, who Gascon said was unarmed, was in the front passenger seat of a car that had just started to speed away when shot in a parking lot at Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue in Long Beach.
A week later, Gonzalez was fired from the Long Beach Unified School District.
The move by the District Attorney’s Office to file the murder charge underscores that the school board made the right move when it took “decisive and unanimous action” to fire him, the Long Beach Unified School District said in a Wednesday statement.
An internal review had determined there were areas where Gonzalez “clearly” violated the school district’s policies, the district said.
School safety officers are not sworn police officers nor employees of the Police Department. The school district’s use-of-force policy says its officers are not supposed to fire at a fleeing person or a moving vehicle or — except “as a final means of defense” — at a vehicle’s window.
A photo from the scene shows a bullet hole through the car’s rear-passenger window on the right side, behind where Rodriguez was sitting when she was shot.
There are a “host of things” that can go wrong while shooting at a moving vehicle, although every circumstance is different, Luna said.
The shooting sparked protests calling for a charge to be brought against Gonzalez. Rodriguez’s family called for justice.
“This really impacted our community heavily, the city of Long Beach, our community, our school district — our partners we work with every day,” Luna said. “This is just a step in trying to bring some closure to this very unfortunate and impactful incident, not only to our city but to the Rodriguez family.”
Rodriguez was the mother of a 5-month-old son. She was declared brain dead by doctors after the shooting, then died after taken off of life support on Oct. 5.
She was in the car with her boyfriend, who is the child’s father, Rafeul Chowdhury. He was driving and his 16-year-old brother was in the back seat.
On Wednesday, Chowdhury was gratified by the District Attorney’s Office’s decision to file the murder charge, his lawyer, Robin Perry, said in a statement.
“Prior to this incident, this 6-month-old baby boy had a mother and a father that he lived with, that loved him,” the statement said. “Because of the criminal actions of this individual, the child will not grow up with a loving, intact family. While Rafi will do his best, you can never replace a mother’s love.”
The car had left the scene of a fight that Rodriguez was in with a 15-year-old girl when Gonzalez approached them. A Millikan student was involved in the fight, Luna said, although the chief didn’t say whether that was the 15-year-old.
As the car lurched away, Gonzalez fired two shots, video of the incident on social media shows.
In addition to the District Attorney’s Office, Long Beach police have been investigating the case.
Gonzalez started working as a school safety officer in Long Beach in January.
Before that, he worked as a sworn officer with the Los Alamitos Police Department for a few months in 2019, and he also had that position with the Sierra Madre Police Department. It wasn’t clear how long he worked for Sierra Madre, but the department’s social-media posts featured him in 2019 and 2020.
Gonzalez was a U.S. Marine and had spent 24 years working with Time Warner and Spectrum as an investigator until he was laid off, Los Alamitos police Chief Eric Nunez said during a City Council meeting in 2019. Gonzalez was born in Los Angeles, went to high school in Santa Ana and was a Police Explorer in Fullerton, according to Nunez.
In 2015, Gonzalez graduated from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s regional training academy as a reserve deputy and was awarded the Reserve Deputy of the Year for north operations three years later, Nunez said.
Gonzalez was cooperative during his arrest and was upset on the day of the shooting, Chief Luna said.
Following Wednesday’s press conference, Oscar Rodriguez called his sister “my angel” and recalled how she spent 10 months caring for him after one of his arms was shattered in a motorcycle accident. He said Rodriguez had budding passions for cosmetics and music that she never had a chance to fully explore.
“There are a lot of people saying things about what she was doing before (the shooting),” the brother said. “But even me, I had my flaws but I figured them out as I grew. Mona never got that chance.”
Relatives said she had attended Cabrillo High School in Long Beach.
