On Sunday, police responded to a call of a suspicious vehicle parked on Manchester Boulevard around 3:10 am. When police arrived, they engaged in a 45-minute long standoff before opening fire on the man and woman inside the vehicle, killing them both.
In the news release on Monday, following the shooting, police claimed that the woman in the car had a gun. Scott Collins, a spokesman for the Inglewood Police Department said that the couple refused to obey the officers’ commands to exit the vehicle. The officers then feared for their safety and opened fire on the car — killing the couple.
The woman was pronounced dead shortly after the shooting, and the man succumbed to his injuries after paramedics transported him to a local hospital, according to the LA Times.
The shooting seemed like an open and shut case until the next day. Mayor James Butts, while responding to questions about the shooting, opened up a huge can of worms — both the man and the woman were unconscious.
For at least 45 minutes, police attempted “to rouse” them in an effort “to de-escalate the situation,” said Butts.
After admitting that the couple was asleep, Butts quickly defended the officers, noting, “Obviously at some point they were conscious because somebody felt threatened.”
However, that notion has yet to be proven and is particularly unlikely due to the fact that not a single officer received so much as a scratch, nor did the couple have any reason to be violent.
Both of the victims were parents; Kisha Michael, 31, a single mother of three sons, and Marquintan Sandlin, 32, a single father of four daughters.
Michael’s twin sister Kisha stated the obvious when she said that it’s possible that Kisha merely passed out on the way home from their night out.
Families for both described them as devoted parents who made arrangements for care of their children while they took a night off, according to NBC Los Angeles.
“The police ain’t telling us nothing,” said Trisha Michael after being met with tight lips from the department.
“He was a loving father,” said Sandlin’s sister Leandra Faulkner. “All he cared about was his girls, getting them right.”
Of course, as is standard procedure for all those killed by police, their arrest records were released to shame them. Michael was on probation for a misdemeanor last year, and 7 years ago, Sandlin was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm in Los Angeles.
According to his relatives, Sandlin had a ‘rough life’ but had turned it around and was working as a successful truck driver.
Sadly, these children will now grow up knowing that their parents were taken from them by cops, scared of a sleeping couple.
