Just over four months after a jury deadlocked in his murder trial, a former Long Beach Unified School District safety officer pleaded no contest Tuesday to voluntary manslaughter for an 18-year-old woman’s shooting death about a block from a high school.
Eddie Gonzalez, 54, is due back in a Long Beach courtroom for sentencing Oct. 8, when he is facing either three years or six years in state prison under a plea agreement, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
He remains free on bail pending his sentencing.
After about two days of deliberations in April, the jury’s foreperson told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Goul that the panel was split 7-5 — with the majority favoring convicting Gonzalez of second-degree murder. The other five opted for voluntary manslaughter and an acquittal on the more serious offense of second-degree murder for the Sept. 27, 2021, shooting of Manuela “Mona” Rodriguez about a block from Millikan High School in Long Beach.
Rodriguez was fatally shot as she sat in the front passenger seat of an Infiniti being driven by her boyfriend in a parking lot near the intersection of Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue in Long Beach.
The shooting was captured on video that was widely aired on local media.
Rodriguez died days later after being taken off life support. Gonzalez was charged with murder about a month later. Jurors were instructed that they could consider the lesser count of voluntary manslaughter only if they acquitted Gonzalez of second-degree murder.
The jury’s foreperson told reporters after the deadlock that some of the jurors were “focused on the idea of lag time,” which was brought up during the defense’s case to explain the difference in time between when a law enforcement officer perceives a threat and the time a gunshot is fired. But she said she was “absolutely” convinced that Gonzalez was guilty of murder.
A prosecutor told jurors in April that Gonzalez tried to “play police officer” and made a series of bad decisions that led to the fatal shooting, while the defendant’s attorney argued that his client acted in self-defense out of fear he was going to be run over by the car in which the woman was a passenger.
In his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Lee Orquiola said Gonzalez “responded to youthful disobedience with deadly force” and “unjustifiably” fired two shots at the vehicle after an altercation between Rodriguez and a teenage female Millikan student about a block from the school’s campus.
The prosecutor told jurors all that Gonzalez had to do that day was to get the vehicle’s license plate number and let “real police officers handle the situation,” but said he instead “escalated the situation with a series of bad decisions” and “unnecessarily fired two shots at the back of that fleeing vehicle.”
Gonzalez had moved out of the way of the vehicle and was “not in danger at all” of being struck when he fired the first shot, and “did not act in lawful self-defense,” according to the deputy district attorney, who told jurors that Gonzalez was “trying to kill the driver of that vehicle.”
The prosecutor noted that a teenage high school student who shot one of the cell phone videos testified that the school safety officer was at the side of the car when he fired the first shot and at the back of the car when he fired the second shot.
Other bystanders, including a grandmother and her two grandchildren in a nearby vehicle in the parking lot, were fortunate that they didn’t get struck if the bullet had not hit Rodriguez, Orquiola said.
The prosecutor showed jurors the aftermath of the shooting, including a bullet hole in the vehicle’s rear passenger window and a police trajectory rod through the front passenger seat’s head rest, saying that it was “all because he tried to play police officer” and that “he’s not a police officer.”
Defense attorney Michael Schwartz urged jurors to acquit Gonzalez, telling the panel that “true justice” demanded such a verdict.
Gonzalez’s lawyer countered that the case is about what happened within about 1 1/2 seconds after the vehicle’s tires are heard screeching in a series of videos.
He said the prosecution had to prove that his client formed the intent during that time to kill someone before firing the shots, telling jurors that it “isn’t about hindsight” or “slow motion.”
Schwartz said his client shot to “stop the threat of deadly force,” noting that two witnesses called by the defense testified that they believed Gonzalez was in danger of being struck by the vehicle if he had not moved out of the way. He said it doesn’t mean his client is guilty of anything if the “threat changed positions” before Gonzalez fired the shots.
“A tragedy took place, not a crime,” Schwartz told jurors. “It takes longer to say the words.”
He said the prosecution had to prove that the shooting was not done in self-defense, and said they “haven’t done it.”
During the trial, jurors repeatedly saw three videos, including a surveillance video and cell phone videos from two bystanders, in which the vehicle’s tires could be heard screeching before the two shots rang out.
Rodriguez — the mother of an infant son — was in the vehicle with her boyfriend and his teenage brother, and was struck in the head by one of the bullets, which entered the vehicle through the rear passenger window. Police also found a strike mark next to the rear passenger window’s door handle.
Gonzalez — who is free on bond — did not testify in his own defense. He was fired by the school district a week after the shooting.
In April 2023, Rodriguez’s family announced that they reached a $13 million settlement of their lawsuit against the school district in connection with her shooting death.
The lawsuit alleged that Gonzalez did not pass probation when he tried to be hired by the Los Alamitos and Sierra Madre police departments, but he was still hired by the LBUSD, which compounded matters by negligently training him.
The family’s attorneys also argued that Gonzalez violated district policy by shooting into a moving vehicle at a fleeing person.
“I personally don’t really care about the settlement. It’s not bringing back my sister,” Rodriguez’s brother, Omar, said last year. “I don’t want anybody else to go through this pain.”
