Woman Shot By School Safety Officer Will Be Taken Off Life Support

Eighteen-year-old Mona Rodriguez was left brain dead after a school safety officer shot her. The victim’s family has decided to take her off life support within the next few days.

Rodriguez, the mother of a 5-month-old boy, was shot by a Long Beach Unified School District Safety officer while in the passenger seat of a car that fled the area near Milikan High School after a confrontation with the officer.

Long Beach Police Department was dispatched to the scene where they found her suffering from a gunshot wound, ABC 7 reported.

“What happened to my sister wasn’t right,” said the woman’s brother, Oscar Rodriguez, during a news conference on Friday afternoon. “I just want justice for my sister. She didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this. I haven’t been able to sleep. I haven’t been able to eat. All we want is peace. Nobody should ever have to go through this.”

The school safety officer was driving in the area when he saw the woman in an altercation with a teen girl.

Authorities claim that when Rodriguez and two others attempted to leave the scene, the school safety officer approached their vehicle. But apparently, the driver was pulling off while the officer fired his weapon, hitting the victim.

The woman’s boyfriend, Rafeul Chowdhury, and his brother were also in the car. They say that the officer never told them to stop before firing two shots into the car.

Rodriguez was shot in the head.

“I don’t think my girlfriend deserved this. It was all for no reason,” Chowdhury said Wednesday afternoon. “She did not deserve to get shot. She might have been doing something she wasn’t supposed to, but she was unarmed,” Rodriguez’s cousin Alex Cervantes said at the vigil. “She was already fleeing.”

The family would like to see criminal charges pressed against the officer involved.

“This officer should be in jail right now. The mother is suffering,” Carrillo said. “Every family member and friend is suffering.”