UPDATE, MARCH 8, 12:36 P.M.: As expected, the family of the late Manuel “Manny” Levi Loggins, Jr., a U.S. Marine sergeant who was gunned down by a sheriff's deputy near San Clemente High School last month, has filed a claim against the County of Orange, beginning a legal process that often leads to a lawsuit.
The complaint states the shooting of Loggins was unjustified, his two daughters who watched it unfold were traumatized, and the girls were unjustly held for 13 hours afterward.
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The claim, filed Wednesday with the Board of Supervisors, seeks more than $10,000 in damages for offenses that include wrongful death, battery, assault, false arrest, negligence, negligent hiring, negligent
training, supervision and retention, intentional infliction of
emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and civil rights violations.
“At
no time during the course of these events did Sgt. Manuel Loggins, Jr.
pose any reasonable threat of violence to the involved deputy, nor did
he do anything to justify the use of deadly force against him, and the
involved deputy's use of force was unreasonable, deadly, excessive, and
unlawful,” reads the claim.
To make matters worse, Loggins' 9- and 14-year-old girls were kept away from their
mother and held for questioning after watching their father's slaying, according to Brian T. Dunn, the family's lawyer from the Cochran Firm of Los
Angeles.
Deputies and their union have said Loggins crashed his GMC Yukon through a school barrier in front of a cop, got out, acted irrationally, posed a danger to his daughters when he climbed back behind the wheel despite being ordered not to, and was taken out for their safety. But the claim counters Loggins made “no aggressive movements, no furtive gestures and no physical
movements which would suggest to a reasonable deputy that he was armed
with any kind of weapon, or had the will, or the ability to inflict
substantial bodily harm against any individual.”
Darren Sandberg, the 15-year-veteran deputy who shot and killed Loggins, approached the sergeant sitting in his SUV with his daughters for no reason and started the chain-of-events that led to the shooting of an unarmed man, charges the complaint, which blames the cop's actions for the Marine's wrongful death.
Sheriff Sandra Hutchens was not surprised by the claim, which was filed against the county, her department and Sandberg, himself a onetime combat Marine.
Loggins' wife gave birth to the couple's fourth child, another daughter, on Sunday.
ORIGINAL POST, MARCH 2, 12:21 P.M.: No surprise here: the family of U.S. Marine Sgt. Manuel “Manny” Levi Loggins, Jr.,
who was fatally shot by a deputy near San Clemente High School last
month, is reportedly whipping up a lawsuit against the Orange County
Sheriff's Department.
The family had earlier retained Brian T. Dunn, a personal injury lawyer with LA's Cochran Firm, the late Johnnie Cochran's shop famous for the O.J. Simpson, Reginald Denny and Geronimo Pratt cases.
Today, the Orange County Register reports Dunn is planning to file suit on behalf of the Loggins family, which includes the Marine's wife and four children, one yet to be born. Dunn had previously told Patch.com, “based on what we have now, we're pretty much convinced that the shooting was completely unjustified.”
An earlier Patch piece featured police experts concluding sheriff's deputies made several tactical blunders facing Loggins, but the shooting may still have been justified.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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