911 caller who lied about armed robbery gets jail time
The 911 caller who lied about being robbed at gunpoint the night Pasadena police shot and killed unarmed teenage robbery suspect Kendrec McDade agreed Monday to plead guilty to false reporting charges.
Oscar Carrillo will serve 90 days in jail and perform 90 days of community service after he surrenders himself at the Pasadena courthouse June 27, his attorney, Andres Bustamante, said.
Carrillo will also receive 36 months of probation and pay a restitution fee of roughly $3,000 to the Pasadena Police Department, city spokesman William Boyer said.
McDade, 19, was shot eight times March 24, 2012, during a brief pursuit in Northwest Pasadena initiated by Carrillo’s claim in a 911 call that he had been threatened with a gun.
After the shooting, Carrillo admitted he had lied about seeing a weapon in order to generate a faster police response.
Carrillo, 27, had faced up to 4 1/2 years in jail on six misdemeanor charges filed by the Pasadena city prosecutor’s office.
On Monday, Carrillo pleaded guilty to one count of falsely reporting a criminal offense and one count of reporting an emergency knowing the report was false, Bustamante said.
In exchange for his plea, prosecutors will drop two additional false-reporting charges and two charges of delaying or obstructing a peace officer.
Bustamante said his client “wanted to put this behind him.”
“It was an unfortunate, tragic experience for everybody involved, and he just wants to move on,” he said.
Carrillo has two U.S.-born children but faces possible deportation to Mexico after serving out his sentence, Bustamante added.
Pasadena City Atty. Michele Beal Bagneris called the sentence “appropriate, given what he did.”
“If people called and made false reports without regard to potential consequences, that would create too many potential problems in our system of justice,” she said. “Imagine if everybody did that. How would police know what to do?”
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Twitter: @JoePiasecki | joe.piasecki@latimes.com
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