LOS ANGELES : Lawyer Seeks Indictments in 1990 Sunland Shootings

A lawyer said Thursday that he has about 300 photographs and several pages of officers’ notes to show a federal grand jury that is looking into a 1990 Los Angeles Police Department shooting of four suspected robbers.

Attorney Stephen Yagman, who is awaiting a verdict in the trial of a wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from the Feb. 12, 1990, shootings, says he has evidence that can assist the panel in returning indictments on civil rights charges against the officers involved.

After closing arguments in the four-day civil trial, prosecutors asked Yagman if he had any information that might be useful to the grand jury.

Prosecutors have until Sunday--when the five-year statute of limitations runs out--to bring criminal charges against any of the nine officers involved in the shooting deaths of three men after they robbed a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland. A fourth robber was wounded.

The officers, members of an elite LAPD unit called the Special Investigations Section, had followed the suspects from Venice to Sunland and waited until after the robbery to move in for an arrest. They said they opened fire when the robbers pointed guns at them.

But Yagman said the robbers were unarmed at the time. Further, Alfredo Olivas, the robber who survived, has said that the robbers’ three pistols--actually pellet guns--were locked in their truck.