Black Teen Disfigured for life by Oakland Police Awarded $550,000 in Settlement

From [HERE] and [HERE] OAKLAND -- The city will pay $900,000 to settle a pair of police misconduct cases, including one in which a 15-year-old boy was shot in the neck, attorneys said Wednesday.

The teenager, identified publicly only as L.S., was so badly wounded that he eventually had to have his sternum removed, according to his attorneys, John Burris and Adante Pointer. The boy had to undergo numerous surgeries, and city officials say he racked up $440,000 in medical costs. His settlement is for $550,000. The shooting happened in East Oakland, near E Street and 107th Avenue, in July 2007.

The story agreed upon by both sides is that L.S. was leaving a liquor store with an unidentified person when Officer Alan Leal and his partner say they saw him stuffing what they thought were drugs into his mouth. When the officers approached, L.S. ran on foot, throwing into the street a gun he had been carrying.

As the teen ran through a nearby backyard, he and Leal crossed paths and Leal confronted him. Police said at the time of the shooting that Leal ordered the boy to stop several times and then, when the boy reached for his waistband, Leal thought he was grabbing a second gun and fired on him.

However, Pointer said the boy had turned to run when he was shot in the back of the neck. Further, Pointer said, not only did toxicology reports prove he had consumed no drugs -- and was probably just eating a snack from the store -- but no weapons or drugs were found on his body at all after he was shot.

"Essentially, it was a kill shot," Pointer said. "He nearly lost his life. In the course of trying to keep him alive, doctors had to have his sternum, his chest bone, taken out of his chest.

"Now you have a guy, the rest of his life he cannot participate in any type of contact sports. He can't pick up heavy things, things you and I would take for granted. I'm lugging around a heavy briefcase today. He can't do that."

The boy is now 18 years old. His family took him out of Oakland, and Burris said his hope is to get L.S. into a high school equivalency exam program and some kind of training school for a line of work that could suit his permanent disability.

Burris said the boy and his mother -- a single mom who was living in West Oakland at the time of the shooting -- are pleased with the settlement.

"But no amount of money, really, can deal with the disfigurement and the pain that's associated with that. They understand that," Burris said. "He's going to have a lot of recurring pain and body disfigurement for the rest of his life."

Police officials did not return requests for comment Wednesday.

In the second case, Oakland officials agreed to pay $350,000 in attorney fees to Novender Fleming and Victor Jones over a suit in which police were accused of unlawfully searching a home in September 2008 where marijuana was being grown. A federal grand jury last year awarded Fleming and Jones $37,500 in a settlement.