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An appellate court last week ruled in favor of Tiffany Tabares, the mother of a 27-year-old who was shot and killed by a Huntington Beach Police Department officer outside of a local 7-Eleven in 2017.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Feb. 17 that a jury could find Officer Eric Esparza acted unreasonably when he shot Dillan Tabares seven times on Sept. 22, 2017, across the street from Marina High School.
Additionally, the judges ruled that a reasonable jury could conclude that Esparza should have suspected that Tabares had mental health issues, and that he unreasonably failed to follow police protocol on dealing with potentially mentally ill people before using force.