Trial begins for ex-California school safety officer who shot, killed woman after fight

Jurors must decide whether Eddie Francisco Gonzalez was justified when he fired two shots at a car, killing a woman in the passenger seat on Sept. 27, 2021.

A former Long Beach Unified School District school safety officer was past the point of minimal danger when he fired two shots at a fleeing car in the parking lot of a shopping center near Millikan High School in September 2021, killing an 18-year-old woman in the passenger seat, a prosecutor told a jury at the start of trial Thursday, April 4.

But the attorney representing Eddie Francisco Gonzalez, 54, of Orange, countered and said three witnesses told police they saw the car turning toward him with tires squealing and that they thought he was in danger of serious injury or death.

Jurors will be tasked with deciding whether the shooting of 18-year-old Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez, who was seated in the front passenger seat of the car, was justified, or if Gonzalez was already out of danger at the time he shot.

Rodriguez was the mother of a then 5-month-old child. The child was not in the car when the shooting occurred.

Gonzalez is charged with second-degree murder for the Sept. 27, 2021 fatal shooting. He wore a gray suit and glasses during the first day of trial and has been out of custody since posting $2 million bail in July 2022.

Gonzalez, driving a marked school safety SUV, stopped along Palo Verde Avenue near Spring Street after seeing Rodriguez and a 15-year-old girl fighting in the street, surveillance video from the shopping center shows. After breaking up the fight, Gonzalez shoves the 15-year-old to get her to sit on the curb while Rodriguez, her boyfriend Rafeul Chowdhury and his younger brother all head back to their car, which had been stopped at the entrance to the parking lot of the shopping center, according to video played during opening statements.

Gonzalez walks up to the front quarter panel on the passenger side and slams the hood of the car to get the driver to stop, prosecutor Kristopher Gay told jurors. He then points a handgun at the windshield before the driver starts to drive away. After the car passes, Gonzalez fired two shots.

“He shot because three young people disobeyed his commands and tried to flee,” Gay told the panel during opening statements. “He responded to youthful disobedience with deadly force.”

The prosecutor said what minimal danger there was at the time Gonzalez was near the front of the car had passed by the time he lifted the handgun and fired.

Gay told jurors that video from the shopping center and cell phone video from two others nearby would show Gonzalez lower the handgun and step away from the car to get away from the danger first, then fire two shots from behind the car.

Those videos, he said, would match up with witness statements and ballistics evidence, which will show that the path of travel of the two bullets was from behind the car. One of the bullets went through the back passenger window and the front passenger seat headrest before hitting Rodriguez in the back of the head, he said.

Gonzalez’s attorney, Michael Schwartz, told the jury it would hear from three other witnesses who will testify that they thought Gonzalez was about to be seriously hurt or killed after hearing the tires squealing.

“Less than two seconds,” Schwartz said. “That’s what this case is about. In two seconds, he had to assess whether he was about to be run over, get away from it and stop it.”

Schwartz told the jury that prosecutors would not have enough evidence to prove Gonzalez fired with malice and intent to kill that day.

He also said Gonzalez had reason to try to stop the three in the car after the 15-year-old girl told him that her cell phone was stolen and that Rodriguez had threatened to kill her family.

Schwartz told the jury that Chowdhury’s younger brother told police that the fight was planned and that the three were in the area specifically seeking the 15-year-old.

Chowdhury told police the three were in the area of Millikan High School to pick up Adidas shoes for their then-5-month-old son, which they had purchased through OfferUp, Schwartz said, adding that the evidence would not line up with that story.

Rodriguez died a week after the shooting after she was taken off life support.

Meanwhile, LBUSD officials ruled the shooting was out of district policy and Gonzalez was fired about a week after the shooting. Gonzalez was hired by the school district in January 2021, after stints of less than a year each at the Los Alamitos and Sierra Madre police departments.

Long Beach police arrested Gonzalez at his home in Orange a month after the shooting and he remained in custody until July 2022, when he posted $2 million bail about six months after a judge said enough evidence existed to have him stand trial on the second-degree murder charge.

The trial was estimated to last more than a week.