Deputy Reinosa and the man walked back inside the sheriff’s station lobby so that Reinosa could place a service call into the system. Reinosa placed the call, requested backup to the location, and instructed the man to stay inside until deputies arrived to talk to him.
Reinosa left the station and the parking lot to retrieve items from his belongings and was shot approximately 20 minutes later.
The man with the large bag near the metro station was never located.
Why did they stop searching for the shooter?
Detectives investigating the case interviewed Reinosa’s training officer shortly after the incident. This was the same officer who had previously ordered Reinosa to falsify a police report.
After their interview, the detectives claimed that Deputy Reinosa had lied about the shooting and then promptly called an end to the search.
Reinosa’s Arrest
On August 24th, 2019, three days after Deputy Reinosa was shot, Homicide Captain Kent Wegener held a live press conference and stated that Reinosa confessed to faking the shooting. The LA County Sheriff’s Department condemned Reinosa’s actions and fired him shortly after.
Six months passed with no arrests or any discussion of the case. Reinosa, hoping to get his job back, filed a petition with the Civil Service Committee, stating he never confessed to anything and that he never fabricated a shooting.
On January 15th, 2020, Reinosa received a notice that the Civil Service Committee accepted his petition and that he would be granted a hearing to argue his case. Sheriff Department officials also received notice of the granted petition on the same day.
The following day, Reinosa was arrested.
At Reinosa’s preliminary hearing in March of 2021, three people testified that they heard gunshots and found pellets at the scene of the incident.
Witness 1
An active deputy sheriff said he heard two muffled pops seconds before Reinosa broadcast that there was an emergency. He told the court that the pops were loud enough that he could hear them while wearing his helmet.
Witness 2
A woman was inside the apartment complex overlooking the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station at the time of the incident, watching her grandchildren. She said she heard what she believed to be multiple gunshots and that she barricaded her grandchildren inside the apartment for safety purposes.
Investigators
The third person to testify, a detective, said they found multiple plastic and metal pellets located around the scene of the incident and that they were unable to determine why the pellets were there.
Was the Shooter in the Apartment Complex?
Detectives also received a call from a woman who said she’d spoken to a man who was at the scene of the crime. She said she was at a nearby gas station when a man approached her and told her that he recently left an apartment complex overlooking the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station parking lot.
He said that a man told him to leave the apartment complex because he was about to start shooting.
The man went to the elevator to exit the building and as the elevator descended he heard two gun shots.
The Lancaster Sheriff’s Department identified the woman who placed the call and confirmed via video footage that this conversation happened at a nearby gas station.
Investigators told Reinosa that the Lancaster Sheriff’s Department parking lot had a camera aimed at the location where Reinosa was standing when he was shot. They said the camera was new, in working order, and that they were reviewing the footage as part of the investigation.
Later, after the Sheriff’s Department claimed Reinosa fabricated the incident, investigators said the video camera was not on at the time.
The camera would have clearly shown Deputy Reinosa before, during, and after the shooting, exonerating him of the accusations that were made against him.
A young man’s life changed forever because he wanted to report something that he knew was wrong.
After the Sheriff’s Department fired him, Angel Reinosa had no protections because he was an at-will employee. They claimed he fabricated the incident, despite testimony from witnesses and investigators, and denied him the chance to report his training officer’s illegal activity.
Angel Reinosa is innocent.
Angel Reinosa did not do the crimes he is being accused of and there is more to his story than has been publicized. His case deserves close and careful scrutiny and Angel himself deserves for his name to be cleared.