West Covina Officers Will Not Be Charged in Shooting Death : Investigation: Man was killed during a raid. Report concludes there is insufficient evidence against the two SWAT members.

Criminal charges will not be filed against two West Covina police officers who, as part of the “mall murders” investigation in 1991, raided an apartment complex at 2 a.m. and killed an unarmed man by shooting him 28 times in the back.

In an 18-page report released Thursday, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office concluded that evidence is insufficient to file criminal charges against two West Covina SWAT officers who fired shots Sept. 2, 1991, killing Darryl A. Stephens, 27.

The report, released six months after the convictions of the mall murder suspects, ends an extensive two-year investigation by the district attorney’s office.

“We knew our officers acted properly,” West Covina Police Chief Ron Holmes said. “We are very disappointed that it took the district attorney’s office so long to make a decision on a case that, to our mind, was a very clear-cut case.”

Stephens’ relatives, who have filed a wrongful death suit against West Covina police, could not be reached for comment.

Stephens was not a suspect in five murders and kidnapings in the San Gabriel Valley that grabbed headlines that summer.

West Covina police said they raided his apartment using invasion-style tactics because they believed that his roommate had hidden inside the apartment a shotgun used in the killings and that Stephens had threatened to kill police officers if they came to his apartment. His roommate was not charged in the murders.

Stephens lived in the same complex where, two days earlier, four suspects had been arrested. Those four were convicted last year of the slayings, dubbed the mall murders because two victims were kidnaped from the Puente Hills Mall.

“What we have in this case is a problematic shooting,” said the report by Assistant Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden.

In the report, Darden pointed out that Stephens was a felon and officers believed him capable of violence against them.

According to the account prepared by Darden:

Stephens’ behavior during the raid caused Officers Michael Schrock and Neal Hopkins to fear for their lives. After entering the apartment, an angry Stephens yelled an obscenity at the officers. Stephens was lying face down on his bed with his left hand dangling over the side of the bed and his right hand hidden under his body.

A tape made by police revealed that officers shouted “Let me see your hands!” and when Stephens moved, he was shot.

The officers said Stephens ignored their commands to freeze and began to move his hands under the bed as if reaching for something. At the movement, the officers said they fired in self-defense.

The report ends an investigation involving interviews with more than 50 witnesses, a grand jury proceeding and examination of hours of police dispatch tapes.

“We spent two years looking at it,” said Darden of his investigation. “We went to the (Los Angeles County) grand jury. We subpoenaed everything imaginable. On some issues, we even went on a fishing expedition. We pulled out all the stops.

“The law is the law,” he said. “We can’t change it because some people might not like what happened in that apartment.”