SANTA ANA, CA — The man leaves behind his wife and 8-yr-old son. Cops rolled up in battle mode and saw him holding a garden hose (which they thought was a “gun”) — they issued no warning and fatally shot him 12 times. Now, three years later, his wife has won a civil suit against the police. She has been awarded $6.5m.
“The money doesn’t bring my son back, which is all I really want,” Douglas Zerby’s mother, Pam Amici, said after the verdict, choking back tears.
“I would just rather have Doug standing here next to me right now. But this is all we can hope for, and I’m very happy with the result.”
“The most important thing is they never announced their presence,” said the family’s attorney attorney, Garo Mardirossian.
“They didn’t give him an opportunity to at least cooperate, to do what the officers wanted him to do,” he continued. “The first time he realized there were cops there is when they shot him, and that just should not happen in America,” he said, according to reports.