The parents of a man shot to death by Los Angeles police in Wilmington last year sued the city Monday.
Meldardo and Leticia Solis’ wrongful death lawsuit also names LAPD Chief Charlie Beck as a defendant. They are seeking unspecified damages stemming from the death of their 35-year-old son.
An LAPD spokesman declined to comment on the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Police previously said Adrian Solis was possibly suicidal and wielding a knife when he was shot about 9:30 a.m. on March 26, 2015, in his home in the 1500 block of Bayview Avenue. No officers were injured.
The suit states that Solis “was not armed and not threatening anyone” that day, and says he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had not taken his medication.
“As such, the killing was unjustified,” according to the lawsuit.
Solis’ mother called 911 after seeing her son in a “distressed state,” the suit states. He was shot multiple times by officers who failed to warn him before opening fire, according to the complaint.
LAPD officers fatally shot 21 people in 2015, many of them members of minority groups, according to the suit. The plaintiffs allege Beck has failed to adequately discipline the officers involved in those shootings as well as other alleged uses of excessive force, creating an “above the law culture within the LAPD” that encourages such violence.
