Security Officer Charged With Murder Of Shoplifter
Hollywood CA January 1 2019
A security guard at a Walgreens in Hollywood was charged with second-degree murder on Monday after shooting a homeless man he suspected of shoplifting, prosecutors said.
The Dec. 2 shooting at the pharmacy, located on a busy section of Sunset Boulevard in the middle of Hollywood, left 21-year-old Jonathan Hart dead.
The incident began when the security guard, 28-year-old Donald Vincent Ciota of Covina, approached Hart. A scuffle ensued, and within moments, officials from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office alleged, Hart started to run away.
That’s when Ciota pulled out a handgun and shot the homeless man in the back.
Police arrested Ciota on Friday. He is being held on $3 million bail, according to L.A County sheriff’s booking records.
Ciota faces one count of murder, with an added enhancement that he used a gun in the killing. If found guilty, he could face 50 years to life in prison, prosecutors said in a written statement.
Carl Douglas, an attorney for the parents and sister of Hart who previously had pushed prosecutors to bring murder charges against Ciota, said the family was accepting the news with “mixed emotions.”
He said the family was still in pain a few days after Hart’s funeral but was still “heartened” that the District Attorney’s Office was moving forward with the case.
“This shooting has left blood on the hands of executives of Walgreens,” Douglas said in an afternoon press conference at his Ladera Heights law firm.
Appearing in court on Monday, Ciota did not enter a plea. His attorney, Mark Geragos, asked the court to push his arraignment to Thursday. He also wanted the judge to view a video of the incident.
Geragos disputed that Ciota should have been charged with murder at all.
“There’s no way in the world this should be a murder case,” Geragos said. “This is ridiculous.”
Neither Geragos nor Douglas have seen the video of the incident. And neither man, both high profile attorneys known for representing celebrities, would say why the video corroborated his account of the killing.
Hart’s family has maintained he was targeted because he was black and gay. They announced earlier this month they were seeking a $525 million settlement from Walgreens over the shooting.
Douglas and activists from Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles also accused Walgreens of hiring armed security guards only for their stores in areas with large black communities. The shooting prompted several protests at Walgreens locations, including the Hollywood store, and calls for a boycott.
“We want this to become too expensive for them to continue this policy (of hiring armed guards),” Douglas said.
In a statement on Monday, representatives of Walgreens said they “extended our deepest and most sincere condolences” to Hart’s family. They said the agreement with the security company hired to guard the Hollywood store was “immediately terminated” following the shooting.
According to the statement, Walgreens hires “armed and unarmed security” for its stores “based on the public-safety needs of each location.”
