A Los Angeles jury has ruled that the city bears no liability in the death of Valentina Orellana-Peralta, a 14-year-old girl who was killed by a police officer’s stray bullet while Christmas shopping with her mother in December 2021. According to reporting from the Associated Press, the jury deliberated for just over a day before reaching a 9-3 verdict in favor of the city, rejecting claims of wrongful death, negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
The case itself is tragic in its specifics. Orellana-Peralta was in a dressing room at a Burlington store in North Hollywood when Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr. fired his rifle three times during a response to reports of a man wielding a bike lock who had attacked two women in the building. One of Jones’s bullets ricocheted off the ground, passed through a dressing room wall, and struck the teenager.
What makes this ruling particularly complicated is that the facts themselves remain contested within the system.
The Officer’s Actions Under Scrutiny
Jones told the LAPD’s Use of Force Review Board that he mistook the bike lock for a gun and thought the suspect stood in front of an exterior brick wall rather than the actual location near the dressing rooms. That distinction matters enormously. Had he known where he actually was firing, a reasonable officer might have acted differently.
The Los Angeles Police Commission, a civilian oversight board, ruled in 2022 that Jones was justified in firing once but that his two subsequent shots violated policy. This is a crucial detail: even the department’s own oversight found his actions problematic. Then-Police Chief Michel Moore went further, determining that all three shots were unjustified. The California Attorney General’s office, however, concluded in April 2024 that Jones acted reasonably under the circumstances and declined to file criminal charges.
So we have a patchwork of conclusions: one justified shot and two unjustified ones, according to the commission; all three unjustified, according to the police chief; all three legally defensible, according to the state attorney general; and now, the city bears no liability, according to the jury.
The Liability Question and What It Means
This is where the ruling becomes harder to untangle from the larger question of accountability. A jury finding that the city isn’t liable doesn’t necessarily mean the officer acted correctly. It means the plaintiffs couldn’t convince nine jurors out of twelve that the city should be held financially responsible for the death of their daughter.
Law and justice cases involving police shootings often hinge on whether an officer’s actions were “objectively reasonable” rather than whether they were right or wise. The legal standard protects officers who make split-second decisions under pressure, even when those decisions result in tragedy. The jury, it seems, applied that framework here.
The family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, called the verdict “the most devastating loss of my career” and expressed confusion about the decision. Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto acknowledged the family’s grief but stood by the outcome, noting that the officer would “carry the burden of Valentina’s death with him for many years.”
That last phrase is worth sitting with. It acknowledges harm without assigning liability. It recognizes suffering without requiring accountability.
What the Verdict Doesn’t Resolve
The jury’s decision doesn’t settle the underlying questions about whether Jones should have fired those shots, whether he should have known where he was firing, or whether the city’s training and protocols contributed to the tragedy. Those questions remain contested even within the official record. The verdict simply means that, in the eyes of this jury, the city of Los Angeles was not legally responsible for monetary damages.
For Orellana-Peralta’s parents, the ruling represents a legal dead end. For the broader debate about police accountability and how we assign responsibility when officers make mistakes that end lives, this case illustrates the gap between finding an officer’s actions legally justified and finding them just.
