Los Angeles County reaches an $8 million settlement with the family of Andres Guardado, who was shot dead by a police officer in June 2020

(Trends Wide) — Los Angeles County officials have reached an $8 million settlement with the family of Andres Guardado, 18, who was shot five times by a sheriff’s deputy in June 2020, attorneys for his family said Tuesday.

“Although the agreement reached with the County of Los Angeles closes more than two years of the civil lawsuit, it does not bring peace to our family or justice for our son Andrés,” Cristobal Guardado said in a statement announcing the agreement.

The settlement stems from a wrongful death lawsuit that Guardado’s family filed against the county.

It was approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and will be paid to Guardado’s parents, according to the statement issued by the family’s attorneys.

Guardado died on June 18, 2020, when two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies chased him after he allegedly displayed a gun, looked at deputies, and fled from an auto body shop in the Los Angeles County city of Gardena. Angeles, authorities said at the time of the shooting. Lawyers representing the Guardado family have disputed those claims.

During the pursuit, Officer Miguel Vega fatally shot Guardado in the back five times, according to a family autopsy and the county coroner’s office.

Guardado, who was Latino, was killed in the context of the social and political unrest that sparked after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Floyd’s murder sparked national and global protests, calling out the racial injustice faced by black people and other communities of color in police encounters.

The shooting sparked the first internal investigation in Los Angeles in more than 30 years. The Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner determined that Guardado’s death was a homicide.

Vega’s attorney, Adam Marangell, previously told Trends Wide, “Guardado refused multiple orders not to reach for a weapon, forcing Officer Vega to fire his weapon in fear for his life.”

The FBI and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office are still investigating the shooting, according to attorneys for the Guardado family, and have yet to reveal whether Vega or his partner on the day of the shooting “were in policy for the use of of deadly force or whether they will be disciplined and/or criminally charged for their actions,” the statement said.

“Peace and justice will only come when the current investigations conclude and agent Miguel Vega is held criminally responsible for Andrés’s death. We will always be grateful to our lawyers, our community and all those people who have raised their voices as defenders of justice for Andrés”, says the statement from the Guardado family.

Trends Wide has reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Vega’s attorney for further comment.

Trends Wide’s Sarah Moon contributed to this report.