SUNNYVALE — The family of a young man shot to death by Sunnyvale police at a mobile home park last year contends in a new lawsuit that the officer acted incorrectly and didn’t need to fire at him even though he was holding a knife.
Relatives of 19-year-old Emmanuel Perez Becerra hope to prove that point in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. Attorneys Adante Pointer and Patrick Buelna filed the suit Tuesday.
Officer Kevin Lemos, who is also named in the suit, fired the two shots that killed Becerra.
“The officer had a Taser,” Pointer said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “He had pepper spray. He had a baton. He never attempted to de-escalate the situation or to use non-lethal force, or to use any other method that might have avoided this needless loss of a young man’s life.”
The March 23, 2024, shooting happened after Becerra called 911 on himself, then ambled half-naked toward an officer while holding a kitchen knife — all part of an apparent mental health crisis, authorities said. They added that Becerra had struggled with his mental health since the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the lawsuit, officers arrived to find Becerra walking with a knife through the mobile park complex on Vienna Drive where he lived, naked from the waist down.
“A naked man walking outside … with a knife,” is what Becerra himself said to dispatchers, according to recordings played at a news conference held by Sunnyvale police eight days after the shooting. Video footage from Lemos’ body camera and a dashboard camera in a patrol car also played at that news conference, showing Becerra walking toward Lemos quickly with a 12-inch kitchen knife.
The videos showed Lemos and Officer Francis Ngo, heard in person and with megaphones from inside their patrol cars, giving Perez repeated commands to drop the knife. With Becerra about 10 feet away — but not raising the knife — Lemos fired twice, hitting Becerra both times.
The lawsuit contends Becerra never threatened or charged the responding officers or anyone else. It also asserts that the shooting was in violation of Lemos’ training. It accuses Lemos, the City of Sunnyvale, and others of excessive force, negligence, battery, loss of familial association, and causing wrongful death.
“The city has not yet received any notification of a lawsuit being filed, and we typically don’t comment on pending litigation,” Sunnyvale police spokesperson Capt. Dzanh Le said Wednesday.
At the news conference after the shooting, Sunnyvale police Chief Phan Ngo — who is of no relation to Francis Ngo — called the shooting a “difficult situation for everyone involved and affected. We take any loss of life very seriously.”
Chief Ngo contended that the repeated warnings from officers and slow pursuit of Perez were examples of the officers trying to de-escalate the situation.
Lemos has been a Sunnyvale police officer since 2018 and went on paid administrative leave after the shooting. The Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office also investigated.
Check back for updates on this developing report.