From [HERE] The family of an unarmed 18-year-old fatally shot by an undercover Los Angeles police sergeant last month plans to sue the city for wrongful death and is asking state prosecutors to file criminal charges.

Ricardo “Ricky” Ramirez Jr. was shot and killed by Sgt. Michael Pounds around 10:30 p.m. July 13 while the plainclothes vice officer was conducting a prostitution enforcement detail along South L.A.’s Figueroa corridor. Pounds shot the young man from behind his car’s dark-tinted driver’s side window.

The night of the shooting, an LAPD vice unit broadcast over the police radio that the “occupants of a silver Cadillac wearing ski masks [were] in a possible dispute with the driver of another vehicle,” according to a release from the department. Pounds was alone in an unmarked car when he began following the suspect vehicle, which police said later stopped across both lanes of traffic on 66th Street. 

According to the police report, two men got out of the Cadillac and “approached the front driver and passenger sides of the vice sergeant’s vehicle” as it was stopped in the roadway. That is when Pounds opened fire through his window, striking Ramirez, who fell to the ground as the others fled.

Paramedics took Ramirez to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 

In a legal claim filed Wednesday, attorney Christopher Dolan alleged the shooting was an unprovoked attack on an unarmed young man who was in town from Northern California after graduation. 

Although the claim alleges assault, battery and violation of civil rights and seeks compensation, Dolan said the family wants reforms, including video cameras in undercover vehicles to capture officers’ behavior.

The lawyer said that prior to the shooting, Pounds “tailgated and aggressively menaced” the Cadillac from his dark sedan with blacked-out window tinting. 

“Unarmed, Ricky and another passenger exited the Cadillac and approached the sedan, asking — arms extended, palms up — why they were being followed,” Dolan said. 

“Without hitting any lights or siren or identifying himself as a police or rolling down the window, a single shot was fired through the driver’s side tinted window directly into the heart of Ricky,” the lawyer said Wednesday at a news conference outside police headquarters while surrounded by two dozen supporters clad in T-shirts featuring the teen’s face.

Dolan said the shooting was “without justification and in violation of police policy designed to save lives. ... The police must be held accountable in order for these killings to stop.” 

He said Pounds never identified himself as a police officer

“Ricky never knew that he was approaching an officer, never made any threats or contact with the vehicle and was shot for asking why the car was harassing them,” Dolan said.

Ramirez’s mother, Renee Villalobos, cried while addressing the crowd in front of police headquarters, saying, “I will never have my son back.”

“The police sergeant was sitting in an unmarked car, and he decided to kill and shoot my son for no reason at all,” she said. “I want to know why the police officer is not handcuffed and charged for the murder of my son.”

After Ramirez was shot, the other young men fled “in fear for their lives, unaware that the shot was fired by an LAPD officer,” according to the claim.

LAPD units pursued the fleeing Cadillac, according to a release from the department, and eventually handed off to the California Highway Patrol, which stopped the vehicle on the 15 Freeway in San Bernardino County. 

The three occupants of the car were taken into custody without incident, including the driver, 26-year-old Israel Dezama, who was arrested for felony evading, police said. The other two occupants were later released from custody. 

“Ricky, my only son, was a good kid, made everybody smile and feel loved. He was at the threshold of his whole life, having just graduated, and the LAPD shot him, causing him to fall through death’s door,” said the teen’s father, Ricardo Ramirez Sr. “Hiding behind tinted glass, without any warning, Ricky was killed. His only crime was being young and of color. This has to stop.”

Ramirez’s father said that said despite police reports, his son “did not have a weapon; he didn’t have a ski mask.” 

Los Angeles police said in a statement that no weapons were recovered.

Ramirez’s family and Dolan have called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office handles fatal police shootings on unarmed persons, to file murder charges against Pounds.