Slain Man Told to ‘Freeze’ by Police Spoke No English

Francisco Gutierrez “never could stand to be indoors,” said his nephew, so after he had gone to Mass and eaten his Sunday breakfast of hot cakes and coffee, he went out to the backyard, where his nephews were playing a noisy game with a couple of starter pistols.

Moments later, Gutierrez, 46, was killed by a single blast from the 12-gauge shotgun of a policeman who was responding to reports of gunfire coming from the Gutierrez house on Carlin Street, just east of Culver City.

Police say Gutierrez was holding one of the handguns when he turned to face Officer Gariner Beasley, who had leaped onto the bed of a pickup truck parked in the driveway and had given the command to freeze--in English. Gutierrez did not speak English. Three witnesses insist that he was unarmed.

“I was playing (with the guns) with my brother Fausto,” said 17-year-old Santiago Gutierrez, Francisco’s nephew. “Francisco was just standing there, watching. He didn’t have one of the guns.”

Santiago said he and his 14-year-old brother dropped the guns, which fire blank cartridges, when Beasley jumped onto the truck and shouted, “Don’t move!”

“He didn’t say they were from the police,” Santiago said, “and when my uncle turned to look at him, they shot him in the face.”

Police say that four-year veteran Officer Carlton Cook, 33, identified himself and Beasley, a 24-year-old rookie, as police officers to the group in the backyard.

Gutierrez “whirled and was pointing a handgun in Cook’s direction when Beasley, believing he was going to shoot, fired one round, wounding Gutierrez in the head,” police spokesman Willie Wilson said. Gutierrez died at the scene.

A cousin, Francisco Munoz, 26, was also in the yard when the shooting occurred, and another relative saw part of the incident from the street, Santiago Gutierrez said.

Police said that another witness saw Francisco Gutierrez holding the gun, but they would not reveal who the witness was.

Gutierrez, a gardener, lived with his sister, Carmen, and brother-in-law, Zacarias Gutierrez, a machine shop worker, and their seven children. He came to Los Angeles from Jalisco, Mexico, 18 months ago, and joined about 20 other members of the clan living in four houses on Carlin Street.

“My uncle hated to be indoors, and he was very shy,” Santiago Gutierrez said. “Whenever someone came in the house, he’d go outside--I think it was because he couldn’t speak English.”

Gutierrez sent money to his mother in Mexico regularly, said his sister, standing near a crucifix and a jar of holy water that she had placed near where Francisco had fallen.

The slain man’s niece, Agustina Gutierrez, said the neighborhood where they lived was rough, “but no one in this family has ever been in trouble with the police.”

Lt. Charles Higbie, who heads the Police Department’s officer-involved shooting team, said Monday that police were still investigating the case.