Hospital report:
It likely will be another four weeks before the Orange County Sheriff’s Department releases information about the officer-involved shooting of 18-year-old Ashley MacDonald, according to a department spokesman.
In the meantime, Newport Beach lawyer Jerry Steering, who is representing MacDonald’s mother, Lisa Marie Guy, said he plans to file a claim against the city’s police officers who shot MacDonald several times on Aug. 25 when she reportedly lunged at the officers while wielding a knife.
Authorities have not released the names of the officers involved.
Witnesses who saw the shooting said MacDonald took a step to the side as if trying to get away from the police when the officers started shooting, Steering said.
“The police were in a triangular position, and that’s how she got shot in the back,” he said.
Witnesses, whose names he refused to reveal, said MacDonald was holding the knife with both hands, the blade pointed up toward her.
MacDonald was shot multiple times, receiving up to 17 wounds including five wounds in the back, according to a copy of a Huntington Beach Hospital emergency room medical report released by Steering on Sept. 7.
Judy Ricci, director of nursing and clinical services at Huntington Beach Hospital, where MacDonald was taken, said she couldn’t confirm the authenticity of the medical report due to privacy issues but confirmed MacDonald’s death.
MacDonald received multiple gunshot wounds to the body, including her left thigh, hand and forearm, and several gunshots in the chest, according to the medical report. She was shot six times in the upper body, three times on each arm and other areas.
She was pale, with no pulse on arrival, according to the hospital medical report. Her pupils were dilated and fixed.
She was pronounced dead at 8.38 a.m., 26 minutes after she arrived at the hospital.
Sheriff’s department spokesman Jim Amormino said he did not know how many shots police fired. The sheriff’s department investigates officer-involved shootings for Huntington Beach and other cities.
MacDonald reportedly fought with her mother that morning, and Guy was cut on the hand. MacDonald left their Sher Lane apartment and walked to Sun View Park carrying a knife. When police were called to the park and ordered her to drop the knife, MacDonald continued advancing toward the officers, who opened fire, authorities said.
In an interview at her home Sept. 1, Guy told the Independent MacDonald was distraught that morning and told her mother she had been drugged and date-raped the night before.
“She was drunk and/or raped by one or more men who fled to Oregon the next day,” Steering said. “She had a dinky knife in her hand. They [the police] could have moved away from her.”
Steering refused to give details about the rapists’ identities, saying he’s waiting for more information.
Amormino said the sheriff’s department was investigating reports that MacDonald had been drugged and date-raped.
“They have conflicting accounts of what happened,” Amormino said. It was a neighbor who informed the officers that this may have happened, Amormino added.
MacDonald’s friend Amanda Saylors said the two men were older and had approached them some time ago at Sun View Park. Saylors said the two men were about 27 and 32 years old, and she didn’t know them well enough to get last names.
MacDonald was shot at least a couple of times in the upper body, but an autopsy will determine the number, Amormino said. The report is expected in a couple of weeks.
Officers had been asked to use “less than lethal force,” such as a pepper-ball gun or a bean-bag gun when they confronted MacDonald in the park, he said.
The names of the officers have not been released.
“I think it’s a disservice to the public,” Steering said. “They are there to serve the public, not murder them.”
About 20 people, MacDonald’s friends, neighbors and concerned citizens, organized a candlelight protest at the intersection of Main Street and Yorktown, near the Huntington Beach Police Department on Sept. 7.
MacDonald’s friends and Guy carried posters, asking people in cars to honk in support and yelled slogans.
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