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Officers in Fatal Shooting of ‘ER’ Actress Acted in Self-Defense: DA

The officers conducted a welfare check on Vanessa Marquez in 2018 when she pulled out what officers believed was a gun, which turned out to be fake.

Two police officers acted in “lawful self-defense” and will not be charged in the fatal shooting of ER actress Vanessa Marquez in 2018 after she pulled a fake gun on them, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has determined. The South Pasadena Police Department officers, Gilberto Carrillo and Christopher Perez, conducted a welfare check on the actress and shot her multiple times after she directed what appeared to be a gun at them. The weapon was later found to be an “all-black BB gun resembling a Beretta 92FS firearm.” Body-camera footage from one of the officers released on Monday shows the two officers entering Marquez’s cluttered apartment where she was found on her bed allegedly having a seizure. Shortly after paramedics and a Los Angeles County Mental health clinician arrived at the scene to help the 49-year-old, she pulled out the fake gun. The officers are heard in the video repeatedly demanding that Marquez drop what appeared to be a weapon. “Both officers, in that moment, actually and reasonably feared for their lives,” according to the district attorney’s Feb. 25 memo.