Police Say Officers Hit ‘Hornet Nest’ at Teen’s Slaying

Westminster police Sunday sketched in dramatic detail the events that led up to their shooting and killing of a Westminster teen-ager Friday night, portraying officers as defending themselves after stumbling into a “hornets’ nest.”

A police spokesman said officers, trying to locate gang members suspected of battering a car and kidnaping two of its passengers, unexpectedly found themselves in “an absolute nightmare” of hostile people who knocked three officers to the ground and tried to take their handguns.

One officer, who police said was on the ground being kicked and beaten, fired at and killed Frank Anthony Martinez, 18, in the driveway of Martinez’s home.

But his brother, Joel Mendez Martinez, 22, who later was arrested on suspicion of assault on a police officer, contradicted the police version of events. He said Sunday that the trouble was started by the abusiveness of one policeman.

Police Chief James I. Cook has reserved comment on the shooting until a press conference today, during which he is expected to reveal details of physical evidence bearing on the case, a spokesman said.

Police Sgt. Andrew Hall, Cook’s adjutant, recounted the police version of the confrontation Sunday.

He said that at 11:05 p.m. Friday officers were responding to a report of a gang fight when they located a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo whose driver said six to nine members of the local gang West Trece had battered it with crowbars. One of the six occupants of the car was a member of a rival gang, Southside Huntington Beach, the driver said.

The driver of the car said that after denting the car body and smashing several of the windows, the West Trece gang members opened the car and kidnaped two teen-age girls, Hall said.

Much later that night after the shooting, police were contacted by the missing girls, who turned out never to have been abducted. They said they had safely fled as soon as the gang members opened the car doors, Hall said.

But the driver’s story of a kidnaping made the situation much more urgent, and a search was immediately launched for the kidnapers, Hall said.

With two of the battered car’s occupants in a patrol car as witnesses, police began cruising the neighborhood southeast of Golden West Street and Westminster Boulevard. At 11:29 p.m. that patrol car and two others drove down the 14300 block of Olive Street, where officers saw Joel Martinez standing in a front yard.

Waiting for Girlfriend

Martinez on Sunday insisted that he had been there at least 20 minutes waiting for his girlfriend. Before that, he said, he had been at a surprise party for his mother at their home a few doors away.

But Hall said the witnesses identified Martinez as one of the gang members who had battered the car and abducted the two girls. The cars stopped, and one officer approached Martinez, Hall said.

Police have refused to reveal the police officers’ names, saying it is necessary for their protection. Hall instead referred to the officers by number.

Officer One approached Martinez “and says, in effect, ‘I gotta talk to you,’ ” Hall said. “Joel begins to step away from the officer. The officer reaches out to take hold of Joel, and the two begin to wrestle. No fist throwing; they’re wrestling, trying to get control of him and keep him from getting away.”

But Martinez said the officer approached in a much more threatening fashion.

“What happened was the officer came up, grabbed me by the arm, attempting to put my arm behind my back and wrestle me to the ground,” Martinez said. “I asked him, ‘What is the problem? What are you doing? What’s the charge?’

“He replied to me, and I remember distinctly, “Let’s try: ‘Being an (expletive) in public.’ Then I thought, this was not the kind of person I wanted to handcuff me and get me on the ground. I was trying to wrestle him off. I was afraid for my life.”

Hall said that as soon as the struggle began, Officers Two and Three ran to help and at about the same time, “20 to 30 hostile people arrived and encircled the officers.”

According to Martinez, that estimate is grossly exaggerated. “I’m sorry, it just didn’t happen,” he said. He said the people around him were relatives--his great aunt, father and cousin--and they were trying to calm Martinez.

He said an officer arrived and told Officer One “to let me go. He said, ‘Leave him alone,’ or words to that effect.” Martinez said Officer One did let him go and Martinez did calm down but that then Officer One attacked him using a choke hold.

Hall said that Officer One and Martinez separated and the officers stood back to let him cool off. But by that time, the bystanders were “shouting and demanding to know what the police are doing.”

At this point, Hall said, Joel Martinez’s younger brother, Frank, stepped from the crowd, pushed Officer One against a parked car and challenged him to fight. Officer One used his portable radio to call for help, drew his baton and began swinging it back and forth to keep Frank Martinez at bay, Hall said. A woman who tried to intervene by stepping between Martinez and the officer was struck on the hand by the baton, Hall said.

One of the first officers to respond to the radio call was Officer Four, and as he walked up, Frank Martinez began yelling at him, Hall said. Martinez punched Officer Four in the face, then punched Officer Two in the face, then ran toward his home on Olive Street.

All four officers kept their feet, and they began to chase Frank Martinez, Hall said. Martinez turned up the driveway at his house with Officer Two close behind. But as Officer Two reached the edge of the back yard where the surprise party was under way, someone kicked his feet out from under him and he fell, Hall said.

The officer was “immediately encircled” by four to six people, and several began kicking him, Hall said. Among them was Joel Martinez, who kicked him in the head “three times that the officer can remember.”

The crowd took Officer Two’s night stick and was trying to take his gun belt when the officer saw Frank Martinez approach and hit him once in the head with a bottle, Hall said.

At about the same time, Officer Four arrived and was knocked to the ground, encircled, kicked and beaten, Hall said. Officer One arrived, ran to Officer Four and tried to break up the crowd with his night stick. He too was knocked to the ground and beaten, with at least one person using a lawn chair as a weapon.

Hall said Frank Martinez went to Officer Four and also hit him once in the head with the bottle.

“As Frank prepares to hit him a second time, the officer draws his gun and fires once, killing Frank Martinez,” Hall said.

At almost the same instant, Officer One drew his gun and fired three rounds into the air, and the crowd dispersed, Hall said.

The crowd’s hostility persisted for several hours, Hall said. When paramedics arrived to treat Martinez, officers had to use night sticks to clear a way for them, he said.

Hours later, the supposedly abducted girls appeared at the police station, Hall said. “They eventually got hold of friends of theirs, who told them to get hold of us, I suspect.”

Hall said police believe Joel Martinez was one of the gang members who attacked the car and that he will be charged with that attack, as well as felony assault on a police officer. Martinez is free on $10,000 bail.

Sunday night, Joel Martinez said it is incredible that his brother, whom he described as “about 5-foot-8 and only weighed about 115,” would do what police alleged he did. “Frank was skinny--not the kind to run up and hit an officer.”

Martinez said the incident was caused by police who felt they could be aggressive because they were supposedly dealing with gang members.

“At first I blamed myself, because the fight started with me. But that wasn’t my fault. I know the law, I respect the law. It seemed to me they were just out there to start hitting people. They probably figured it was gang-related, so ‘we’ll just beat the hell out of them. Everyone’s going to be on our side.’ ”

Hall, however, said the situation got out of hand because police did not know how many people they were going to have to deal with.

“What went wrong here was when the officers chased Frank down the driveway, they did not know there was anybody in the back yard. So they ran into a hornet’s nest. They thought they were chasing a single guy into a back yard and they had him outnumbered and would take him into custody.”

Hall said all four officers were taken to hospitals, where they were treated for “bruising, swelling and lacerations to head and body” and sent home. Officer Two “will be off a while with an injured knee,” he said.