It all happens very fast: Sixteen-year-old Marlon Rodas is standing inside the dimly lit living room of a Salinas home, a large knife in hand. Suddenly he's down as five bullets rip through his body.
He cries out, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” Once Rodas is on the ground, a Salinas police officer loudly shouts from nearby inside the house, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!”
In Rodas’ last moments he throws the knife in a police officer’s direction. Both his hands go to his chest, where two of the bullets made contact. He is declared dead minutes later.
The dramatic last moments of Rodas’ life, in the early hours of Jan. 18, 2017, were captured on video from four different Salinas police officers' body cameras. That video footage was shown to members of the media during a press conference held by Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo on the afternoon of July 14 at his Salinas office.
Flippo announced that no charges will be filed against officers Manuel Lopez, Jr., and Jared Dominici, the two officers who fired at Rodas. A seven-month-long investigation by the DA's office concluded that there was no evidence that the officers who fired at Rodas could be shown beyond a reasonable doubt to have committed a crime.
Flippo and Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon did not release the videos to the media, but said they were showing them to reporters to demonstrate the evidence supporting their conclusion that there was no crime to prosecute.
Salinas Police Chief Adele Fresé, who received a report about the shooting from Flippo the day before the press conference, told reporters in a separate press conference at police headquarters afterward that she had not seen the same videos yet, only bits and pieces.
She said that now that the criminal investigation is complete, her department will do its own internal investigation. She expects that to take about two weeks.
In the meantime, Fresé seemed satisfied with Flippo’s report.
“I have a lot of confidence in the district attorney’s office of Monterey County,” she said. “He is very experienced and his investigators are also very, very experienced.”
She called the investigation by the district attorney’s office “highly beneficial,” and said it sends a statement to the public “that we are clearly separate.”
Lopez and Dominici were placed on administrative leave after the shooting, she said. They were counseled by a psychologist and within weeks were determined to be ready to return to duty.
In a step-by-step account of the events of that night, Brannon told reporters about the events of Jan. 18. Just after 1:30am, officers attempted for 40 minutes to talk to Rodas, with a goal to build rapport and get him to drop the knife—which he had been seen grinding on the cement in a courtyard behind the home.
Rodas rarely responded during that time, only once answering a question about where he was from, but otherwise he was incoherent, according to police.
The teen’s simple answer to that one question gives some insight into Rodas' history and challenges: His answer was El Salvador, where he'd come from in 2014 when his father—who was already in Salinas since 2002 when Rodas just just 2 years old—paid a smuggler $5,000 to bring Rodas into the U.S. His mother was also in Salinas already, having immigrated in 2011.
His father enrolled him in school in Salinas, but eventually the teen stopped going to school, and separated himself from both parents. He was living on his own at the time he was killed, and the attorneys said it’s not known how Rodas supported himself.
The teen connected with another Salinas man originally from El Salvador in 2015, and asked if he could stay at his Terrace Street home. Witnesses told police that Rodas did not attend school or go to work, spending most of his days watching TV.
The night of Jan. 17, DA officials said that other residents inside a house behind the main home became worried for their safety when they saw Rodas behaving strangely and sharpening the knife. Someone called the police just after 1:30am on Jan. 18.
After almost 40 minutes of trying to talk with Rodas, the officers used high pressure water from a fire hose, 40mm rubber baton rounds and a Taser to subdue Rodas—to no avail, Brannon said.
He and Flippo said officers were surprised the 5-foot, 4-inch, 102-pound Rodas seemed unfazed by those tactics, although it’s unclear whether the first Taser shot made contact.
After those initial attempts by police to subdue him, Rodas ran into the main house on the property. They tried shooting him again with a Taser, which made contact. Rodas continued to run from police further into the house and around a corner, however, knife in hand.
Brannon showed the videos—some in slow motion, and some still shots—from the point of the police entry into the house.
The videos show that Lopez fell on the slick tile floor of the house, which was wet because Rodas, who'd been doused by a fire hose, was dripping water as he ran. Lopez slipped and fell next to Rodas and began shooting his AR-15 rifle.
Lopez told investigators that he believed he was in danger of being stabbed by Rodas. He fired seven rounds total in three seconds. Two struck Rodas and went clear through, one to the abdomen and one to the right thigh.
Other officers on the scene saw Lopez on the floor and told investigators they thought he might have been shot or stabbed. Dominici fired three rounds from his .45 caliber gun; all three rounds struck Rodas in the chest.
Another officer attempted to give aid to Rodas, but he was declared dead by medical personnel on the scene just a few minutes later, at 2:32am, according to the report.
An autopsy report showed Rodas had a level of 1.05 mg. of methamphetamine in his system. Brannon said meth is effective at 0.01 to 0.05 mg., and is potentially toxic starting at 0.2 mg. Rodas, he said, was well within the toxic level.
Pointing out the challenge facing law enforcement due to meth, Flippo said his office did a review of officer-involved shootings in Monterey County over the past four years and found that in eight out of 13 cases, or 62 percent, victims tested positive for the drug.
Flippo called the sequence of events “tragic.” He said both parents were contacted the day before and told of the decision.