Torrance Shooting 'Unbridled Police Lawlessness,' Says Attorney

Details emerged Sunday about a second incidence of police injuring an innocent person driving a pickup truck in the initial hours of an accused cop-killer's  rampage.

Torrance police rammed a man's pickup truck, injuring the driver, and fired three shots into it on Thursday morning near the intersection of Beryl Street and Flagler Lane, fewer than 100 feet from the Redondo Beach border.

The driver was a baggage handler at LAX heading to the beach to go surfing, The Times reported. David Perdue was not shot but suffered a concussion and a shoulder injury in the crash and has not been to work as a baggage handler at LAX since.

His black 2006 Honda pickup truck was totaled.

"I don't want to use the word 'buffoonery,' but it really is unbridled police lawlessness," Perdue's attorney, Robert Sheahen, told The Times. "These people need training and they need restraint."

In a news conference near the scene of the shooting hours after it took place, Torrance police said neither Perdue nor the officers were injured in the incident.

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The incident occurred shortly after officers from the Los Angeles Police Department shot at two newspaper delivery workers, injuring one in her back and the other in her hand. That incident also occurred at about the same time that Christopher Jordan Dorner was reportedly shooting at police in Corona and Riverside, killing one officer there.

The second Torrance incident involved police units responding to a "shots fired" call, possibly the one involving the newspaper carriers, which happened near the home of an LAPD officer named in Dorner's manifesto.

Shaehen told The Times his client was flagged down by officers in a patrol vehicle. After telling the officers he was headed to the beach, the first officer let him drive off.

But a second police car rammed Perdue's truck, which was a different make and color than Dorner's gray or blue Nissan, which was later found burning in Big Bear. Perdue is white, Dorner is black, and Perdue is several inches shorter, as well as 100 pounds lighter than the former LAPD cop.

The Torrance Police Department told The Times that Perdue's pickup truck was moving directly into the path of one of their patrol cars and did not appear to be yielding to the second car.

When the vehicles collided, Perdue's airbag activated, blocking the view of the police car's driver—and one of the officers fired three rounds.

A Torrance department spokesman told The Times on Saturday that the shooting is still under investigation.

"The circumstances of the incident known to the responding officers would have led a reasonable officer under normal circumstances—and these were far from normal circumstances—to believe that fellow officers were being shot at and that the vehicle traveling toward them posed a serious risk," said the Torrance Police Department in a statement released to The Times.

"In the split seconds available to them action was appropriate to intervene and stop the actions of the driver of that vehicle."

Torrance police apologized to Perdue and offered him a rental car and payment for his medical expenses, The Times reported.

Related:

• Police: Shootings Case of Mistaken Identity

—Editor Nicole Mooradian contributed to this report.

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