Father of Three Is Remembered What Would Have Been His 40th Birthday
By Dolores Quintana
On Saturday, May 13, a vigil took place to honor the memory of an unarmed man who was shot and killed by Culver City police in December 2022 as reported by KTLA 5 News. Guillermo Medina, a 39-year-old man with schizophrenia, died after being shot in the back while fleeing from the police during a mental health crisis.
The family held a vigil by candlelight on what would have been his 40th birthday. Venice Boulevard and Cardiff Avenue, near the location where Guillermo died. The incident occurred on December 18, 2022, when police responded to a domestic violence call. Guillermo fled the scene in his car, leading officers on a pursuit from Culver City to Hollywood and Santa Monica before returning to Culver City, where he eventually crashed his car into a center median.
After fleeing from his car on foot, Medina was shot by police, resulting in his untimely death. The Culver City Police released the body cam footage from the chase in January but it did not convince the family that the shooting was justified. They filed a civil rights lawsuit contending that Guillermo was experiencing a mental breakdown during the incident.
Adriana Medina, Guillermo’s wife, stated that she called the police and explicitly informed them about her husband’s crisis. Despite his erratic behavior, Guillermo repeatedly assured the officers that he was not a threat to anyone and pleaded with them to exercise restraint, as claimed by his family. Adriana emphasized, as quoted by KTLA 5 News “It was made clear to the dispatcher, it was made clear to the officer who was in my house over and over. I said it for an hour.”
Family friend Nancy Barba said in an interview, “The tragedy of it all is that this was a human being having a mental health crisis and while the city of Culver City has had [the idea] of a mobile crisis intervention unit in discussions as a possible way to address mental health for years…and every time there is a death of someone experiencing a mental health crisis, we have to think how could this have ended differently. If there was the right kind of care. I think that it is a preventable tragedy.”
The family asserts that Guillermo was unarmed and mentally ill and the police stood by instead of immediately calling for medical assistance. According to the family, no weapon was observed or discovered at the scene, although the police reported finding a replica firearm in Guillermo’s vehicle. As various agencies, including the California Department of Justice, the California Attorney General’s Office, the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, and the Culver City Police Department, continue to investigate the case, the Medina family has pursued justice through the federal civil rights lawsuit as we reported in February.
