Suit Filed in Slaying by Deputies

Attorneys for the family of Jesus Vargas Trejo said Friday that they will file a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies shot the 25-year-old carpet cleaner in the back last month as he lay face down in the doorway of his girlfriend’s home in Compton.

Citing the statement of a purported eyewitness and the results of an independent pathologist, attorneys Luis Carrillo and Greg Moreno said they will prove that Trejo’s death was unnecessary and that deputies attempted a cover-up by alleging he died after a struggle for a weapon the night of July 9. They also called for investigations by the Justice Department and FBI on the grounds that local authorities will not seriously review the death.

“What I fear is that this is going to be a whitewash by the Sheriff’s Department . . . and that after all is said and done, we will have another killing of a Mexicano by officers of the law,” Carrillo said at a news conference in Montebello.

Sheriff Sherman Block disputed the claims by attorneys and insisted that evidence--and other eyewitnesses--point to a sad but unavoidable shooting as Trejo struggled with deputies.

“Based on the facts as we know them now, I would say unequivocally that it was a clean shooting,” Block told reporters. “All shootings are tragedies, no question about that . . . but from the standpoint of whether it was justified or not, that’s a different story.”