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Season Six: Episode 20 (2025)
70 Plays3 hours ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Series Context and 2018 Incident Overview
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:59
Speaker
I don't know deep we are into these things. It's like number 20, depending on like how the order sort of shakes out. So this is like episode 20, maybe 21, I think, somewhere in there.
00:01:10
Speaker
With this one, and we're going back to 2018, and picked two very different... two like very different locations but like interesting attacks and i i wanted to talk about both of them and then i also wanted to talk about the fact that like uh the perception by the press was was very very different believe it or not the first one's kind of short and simple as to what happened um the aftermath was more interesting than what happened uh it's from march twenty third of 2018.
France's Watch List and Radicalization Issues
00:01:41
Speaker
there were these series of attacks that started happening in France. And by this point in time, like by the time we get here, they're all considered to fall into a category as Islamist terrorist attacks. I don't know if that applies to all of them, but that's that's how it's...
00:02:00
Speaker
viewed. And between 2015 2018, France places over 20,000 people on a watch list of possible extremists in their country. And they have about 240 people that have been killed in these like sort of localized terrorist attacks. This is not really all that different. This is Redouane Lactem. So that's R-E-D-O-U-A-N-E-L-A-N-E.
00:02:25
Speaker
L-A-K-D-I-M, and if I mispronounce it, I don't care because he's the problem in this situation. He was born in Morocco back in April 1992. He had come over to France in 2004 and became a naturalized citizen because his father had acquired French citizenship.
00:02:44
Speaker
By 2018, he was living in an estate in Carcass. He lived there with his parents and his sister. And that's always interesting to me because he's 25 years old. He's living at home. He's in a foreign country. There'd be a lot of things to do in the world. And like I cannot imagine being so wrapped up in something that this is the the direction that you go.
00:03:04
Speaker
He was known to the police in Carcassonne, but it really just as a petty criminal, and they called him a small-time drug dealer. When i looked at some of the translations on the court papers, I don't know if something's lost there for me. um the The amounts look a little larger than I would think small-time. But in 2011, he got a suspended prison sentence for the possession of illegal weapons, and And he had served about a month in prison, i think online it said 2016, but it looked like 2017 to me, for essentially like a flea and a lewd and for having drugs on his person.
00:03:44
Speaker
Now, he had been monitored by the French authorities. as a potential extremist. There was a flag on him, ah it's an S flag, which is the highest level of these flags in France.
00:04:01
Speaker
It allows someone to be surveilled, but not arrested, meaning they're viewed as some kind of risk. And in his case, i he was considered to be a serious threat to national security all the way back to 2013.
00:04:17
Speaker
So that's interesting to me because it takes a while to get this flag. and They don't put it on him officially until 2014, but there was no specific indication that he was about to commit an attack. So that baffles me because that's four years before what we're about to talk about.
00:04:35
Speaker
That they knew this and put this flag on him. His girlfriend, she had converted to Islam and she was also known to French security services. So these two people living in Carcassonne in this essentially like ah the projects kind of like it's sort of section eight housing.
00:04:52
Speaker
They're known to France's NSA, there's nothing that France can do about them. You can pull map of this. There's a lot of videos from the day this happened that are quite interesting. There's not a lot put out there about the perpetrator himself. want to point really quick, when we say Islam, the reason terrorist attacks are very commonly tied to the extreme Islamics is because they have a deeper belief than just the normal Islamics, right?
00:05:24
Speaker
Right. Like, are you talking about in terms of the wiping out the infidel type thing? The radicalized parts of people who follow Islam, they feel like anybody who doesn't believe what they believe should be killed. but Okay. The extreme. Yeah, no I would agree with that.
00:05:45
Speaker
That's how we come to have these watch lists. This is not Meg and I being political or religious or anything like that. That's just how we get these watch lists. I'm saying it's sort of twofold because everybody that follows Islam is not a radical extremist, right?
00:06:00
Speaker
But a lot of times those are the groups. Actually, just about every time it's it it's an Islamic terrorist attack. It is the radicalized sectors of it doing it. And so that's how they're able to follow them. But like you said, they can't do anything about it just because there's a chance it might happen.
00:06:25
Speaker
Right. And it's interesting because people tiptoe around this, and in this case, four years, basically. I don't know how he comes on their radar as being this high security risk.
00:06:40
Speaker
It looks like like he's made statements and and sort of ah come on their radar from the perspective of that the way he arrives in France. Most of the time it's from confidential informants.
00:06:57
Speaker
Right. that's That's sort of where i was going to go. I wasn't going to confidential informant. That's probably a better way to phrase it. i was going to say it's local community members who observe him doing something or saying something. Because people who aren't on a list part of, like if they're part of the Islamic community, but they're not part of like the radical extremist, they want to stop the radical extremist just like everybody else. Right. Right.
00:07:27
Speaker
Because it gives their community a bad name, essentially. And, you know, obviously, this is a, that's a little bit out of our wheelhouse, sort of, but not really because, like, every single radical extremist Islamic terrorist attack is a huge crime, right?
00:07:49
Speaker
And it's important to make the distinction, right? And because otherwise, right following Islam is not bad, it's It's a completely legit ah religious choice, right? I mean, community and well most of them are not radical extremists. And we need to make the distinction, and I always try. a lot of people don't understand all the nuances of that situation. Yeah. The group of people who are constantly doing terrorist attacks throughout the world, it's not the face of Islam, right?
00:08:27
Speaker
It's the very small minority. The problem is that they get the most attention because of the bad things that happen. But essentially, they believe that everybody else besides them, we're ruining the world, basically, and that we must all die.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's where it comes to be. Really what it is, is if you're trapped in extremism... which these people do get themselves trapped in it and they think that they're actually getting a way out of something. But truthfully, that's the mental illness they have going on talking and people will say, Oh no they're not mentally ill. They're extreme. Well, the extremism itself is an aspect of like latching onto something, particularly at 25 years old, um, ah where you're unable to make the distinction between what you should and should not be doing.
00:09:19
Speaker
In this instance, um, with Lactam.
Carcassonne Attack by Redouane Lakdim
00:09:23
Speaker
This is March 23rd, 2018. He arms himself. He gets a handgun, which he's been convicted of having handguns before. That could be another way that he ends up on these lists.
00:09:34
Speaker
um He takes a hunting knife. He drops his little sister off at school. And then he makes his way up to a local car park at an overlook in Carcassonne. this area is known as being a place where...
00:09:52
Speaker
Gay men meet. Meetings are arranged here. He gets here around 10, 15 in the morning. He's dropped his little sister off at school. He goes up here and The way that the French police and the French press report this, they're saying this first attack is motivated by his homophobia.
00:10:11
Speaker
I'm not going to get into all the psychological nuances that come with a situation like that when you're extremist and you attack people who are not doing anything wrong, but you view it as wrong for whatever reason.
00:10:24
Speaker
Frequently, frequently. their own impulses can lead them to have like these ah very harsh feelings towards other people for no good reason, because like these other people are simply engaging in their own relationships.
00:10:36
Speaker
We don't have any control over other people's relationships, and that's another aspect of extremism that like is kind of recognized, but like not so much. But according to the French press and the French police, this first attack is motivated by homophobia. So Lactam, he shoots a man from Portugal named Renato Silva. So he's standing close to his car and he's smoking a cigarette when he is shot by Lactam.
00:11:06
Speaker
Then he turns around and shoots and kills Jean Mazarus, who's in a retired wine grower. He was coming over to see what was happening between Lactam and Renato.
00:11:18
Speaker
The perpetrator gets into Renato Silva's car and he drives away. He ends up opening fire on four police who were actually just out jogging and heading back to their barracks.
00:11:36
Speaker
One of those officers is pretty severely wounded, but again, unprovoked. He then drives five miles out of Carcassonne, and he drives over to Treat.
00:11:50
Speaker
And I don't say that correctly. I don't trill the R, but that's a French city. He arrives at what's known as a Super U. Are you familiar with a Super U? Yeah, but we don't have him here, I don't think.
00:12:06
Speaker
No, no. this is this is a It's a specific like ah French grocery store. There are multiple independent, essentially supermarkets or grocery stores or little box stores that are all under a big conglomerate together in France.
00:12:23
Speaker
He gets there about 10.40 in the morning. He walks in, and he goes to... ah set his terror on fire, essentially. Not like literal fire, but like he he's going to ramp things up. He immediately kills an employee.
00:12:39
Speaker
ah This is a butcher named Christian. And then he kills a customer named Herv, who's a retired Mason. But he walks up to them and he shoots both of these men at point-blank range.
00:12:53
Speaker
So this has escalated into pure terror. I mean, it started out as terror, let's be honest, but like it is now escalating until he has targets because he is in a store where people go to do other things and are not expecting him to be there. And that is the only reason he goes someplace like this. So chaos erupts in this store.
00:13:14
Speaker
Customers and staff are hiding. they flee the store. They get down on the ground. And Lacton, the perpetrator, throws a homemade hand grenade into the aisles, but it doesn't blow up.
00:13:27
Speaker
So he's stalking through the store with his gun. He takes a female employee who like is in this little closet behind the welcome desk, hiding from what's happening. He takes her hostage, and he tells her to get on the phone with a local police station.
00:13:46
Speaker
And basically, he starts talking to the dispatcher that picks up. He tells them that he is a member of the Islamic State, and that he is there to take revenge on the French for their bombings in Syria and Iraq.
00:14:02
Speaker
And he demands the release of a man named Salah Abdeslam, he is a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who is eventually going to be sentenced to life in prison. He is the only surviving member of this terrorist cell that carried out attacks in Paris um on November 13, 2015, where about people were killed.
00:14:30
Speaker
And over 500 people were injured that night. So he was the only remaining suspect in that. And this guy, Lactam, is demanding his release. So because he's on the list, he gets a much bigger response than your average you know local Looney Tunes hostage taker. Like a person who just is having some kind of break or having some kind of...
00:14:56
Speaker
Revenge scheme or or whatever. He gets quite a few people who come and start poking into what he's doing. So that would be for the perspective of like the United States. Imagine the local police and the sheriff show up and the FBI shows up.
00:15:13
Speaker
They're going to cordon off this area. They're going to bring teams with them, different types of teams that are the equivalent of like hostage rescue teams in the National Guard. And those people are going to help evacuate everyone from the supermarket because they don't know what this guy is carrying. They're hearing all these accounts of him throwing something that seemed like it might be meant to explode. And he's definitely got a gun because he's shot and killed people and he's fired on officers already and he's carrying a knife. So they all they know at this point is whoever this is in here who's called the police and said, here's my name, i'm a member of the Islamic State, means business.
00:15:51
Speaker
So by about 1130 in the morning, they have a ah setup where they start talking to Lactam. And they have a lieutenant colonel named Ahmad Beltram.
00:16:03
Speaker
He convinces Lactam to let the girl go and says, I will come with you. Now they've assembled this hostage rescue team outside the supermarket and they have political people start showing up.
00:16:17
Speaker
One of those political people is a politician who has been a lifelong politician named Gerard Colombe. He arrives on the scene and with the negotiations that start, the police and the FBI, or ah it's the gendarmes, but i'm I'm just saying it from the perspective so we understand it.
00:16:39
Speaker
They bring in the perpetrator's mom and a couple of his sisters and they start trying to negotiate with him. and it's going to take them several hours. About 2.30 The negotiator gets a hold Blacktham, who is kind of communicating through Beltran at this point.
00:16:58
Speaker
And Beltran, when this conversation starts for unknown reasons, he attempts to disarm Lactam, calling out assault, assault to the gentleman on the phone during the negotiations for what's known as the GIGN. This is the elite HRT unit for like the French national police.
00:17:19
Speaker
And he did not distinguish what was being said. It's really ironic you just explained how they were the elite force. I know.
00:17:31
Speaker
I'm saying that on purpose. and I mean, they are meant to be the ones who would understand it, but I'm sure there this is chaos still. So instead, of he was saying, like, assault now because he had started hand fight inside, right?
00:17:44
Speaker
Right. So what I think they either they don't hear him or they like are indicating that he is he they think he's indicating that he's being assaulted. They're not sure what happened. So they delay going in, like essentially breaching the supermarket for a few minutes.
00:18:01
Speaker
They are basically bringing the phone back and trying to get Beltran back on the phone. Then they hear shots inside of the supermarket and they bust it. They end up in this closet with Lactam and they're basically having a gunfight in a very small space in the supermarket.
00:18:20
Speaker
Beltram has been stabbed in the neck and Lactam has shot him. During this gunfight, One of the members of the team are shot and Lactam is killed.
00:18:32
Speaker
Beltram is taken to the hospital and he is going to die of his injuries in the next 24 hours. So this hostage taking and assault, if we include the perpetrator here, there are five deaths and there are 15 injuries. This is sort of a ridiculous type of hostage taking. I just want to point out, like none of his demands were met.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, they were never going to be met. He was on a list. Nobody took him seriously. Like, honestly, 99.99999% of hostage takers doing this are never going to be taken seriously. It is very rare that someone who matters is going to be taking hostages in this manner instead of making people matter. Absolutely. You're absolutely right.
00:19:19
Speaker
So, you know, this does get national attention. they make... Lactam looked like an absolute fool. Like, because, i mean, he's dead now, and, like, he is an idiot. So, not only, like, is he an idiot, he ends up getting about 10 people in his family and his friends group arrested.
00:19:40
Speaker
ah Seven of them get indicted for having supported, essentially, terrorism. And... They go through various stages of trials.
00:19:51
Speaker
It takes them until 2023. In January 2023, seven people go to Paris and they go to basically federal court. Five of them are accused of being part of this conspiracy.
00:20:05
Speaker
One of them is charged with a weapons offense, and the seventh is just accused of not doing. It's not a good Samaritan violation, but essentially, like, they had a chance to stop some of this, and they did not.
00:20:18
Speaker
So they they detained two of them at this point. Five of them are out on bail. The trial is expected to last about five weeks. And this is being held at like this massive courtroom where France actually built it so that they could deal with the Paris attacks trial, which was held a year earlier. The verdicts are announced on the 23rd of February of 2024. So a year and a month later, they find Lacton's girlfriend guilty of criminal terrorist conspiracy and they give her five years in prison.
00:20:51
Speaker
The other six defendants are found guilty of different crimes, and they're all sentenced to between 12 months and four years in prison. So the only thing that Lactam achieved in all of this was to get his friends and family put in prison.
00:21:06
Speaker
So, you know, this is one of those things where, first of all, this guy just kind of made himself an Islamic State member. I don't believe a lot of the terrorists who conduct these attacks do that.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah. It's not like they have Islamic state meetings once a week. Right. And it's not like so whatever you can find. And a lot of times they're single they're suicidal. I mean, single as in like it's one person operating they're,
00:21:42
Speaker
it's It's suicidal, right? Because this according to the extreme radical beliefs, they will be rewarded for that sacrifice in the next life.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, and and they won't be at all. Like when the aliens arrive with the mushrooms and put you on the ship after you die and you go off into a space or whatever, like you're not, like whatever is happening there, you are not rewarded with virgins. You are not rewarded with anything that seems like what you've deluded yourself into thinking you're going to be rewarded with.
00:22:18
Speaker
You're just an idiot who committed a really violent crime and wrecked a lot of families, and you will be remembered as an absolute moron. Because that's the only thing I know about him, is that this guy Lactam is an absolute moron. Right, and that you know obviously, the fact that you have a problem with anyone who doesn't believe in what you believe in, and they're doing something so bad that you're going to kill them, it's a circular argument, Right.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, it really is. And most people who have, you know, common sense and can like sort of think logically, they would say, oh, well, if I kill them, that makes me even worse than them.
00:22:57
Speaker
Even though it's completely subjective to begin with. It's just a weird thing that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around it. It's really fueled by hate and it's unnecessary.
00:23:11
Speaker
Right. That's how I view it. Any sort of people who operate under the the guise that they're doing, it's God's will to take everybody out that doesn't believe in radical Islamic beliefs.
00:23:24
Speaker
That's ridiculous. It's the only religion that does that. Yeah, I mean, that whole thing to me, and I have no problem with Islam.
00:23:35
Speaker
I have no problem with like anything related to a religious belief or a community belief or definitely nothing ah to do with like people's cultural or heritage. I just have a problem where any part of someone believes they can be violent. Like I denounce it If you're in the United States and it has nothing to do with religion, it's militarily or if it's police action, like any time you move forward with hate, whether you're an individual or part of an organization, is absolutely, it should be denounced by the people. Right, and they're never going to actually achieve the goal, right? The goal is to rid the earth of everybody but that doesn't believe just like they do, right? Right.
00:24:21
Speaker
That's not going to happen because unless you've been brainwashed, you're never going to believe that. Right. So that all took place, like the the incident itself took place in May of 2018.
00:24:32
Speaker
twenty I wanted to add it to like another story that like takes place in 2018, a completely different place, that like I find so fascinating for
Los Angeles Hostage Crisis
00:24:45
Speaker
a number of reasons. This is a story from July 21st, 2018. It actually starts the night of July twentieth And it starts with this guy named Gene Evan Atkins. He has lived with his grandmother since he was seven years old. It's now 21 years since he moved in with her. He's 28.
00:25:04
Speaker
He has a been known by family to live with grandma, but also to be like kind of constantly quarreling with grandma. According to a cousin, Gene gets fired from his job and something had gone on where he had lost access to his cars.
00:25:23
Speaker
During different fights with grandma, he's slashed her tires, he's broken windows. Grandma has a serious problem with a lot of what Gene is doing, including the fact that like he keeps bringing this girlfriend to live with him and grandma that grandma does not care for.
00:25:44
Speaker
So the night of July 20th, one of Gene Atkins' cousins spot him sleeping in his grandmother's home. on 32nd Street near Long Beach Avenue. And according to this cousin, she says that Gene was sleeping with a gun under his pillow.
00:26:03
Speaker
Now, the fight that had been ongoing that makes him sleep with his gun is that Grandma was literally trying to kick the girlfriend out. So the following day, Gene Atkins shoots his grandmother in this house.
00:26:20
Speaker
He also shoots his girlfriend. This around 1.30 in the afternoon on July 21st of 2018. So he essentially kidnaps his own girlfriend, drags her, bleeding from a gunshot wound, into his grandmother's car, and they drive away.
00:26:40
Speaker
Now, multiple people, including cousins, family members, friends, and neighbors, report this. And the LAPD is dispatched. So they put up a police helicopter,
00:26:52
Speaker
And they are able to follow him pretty quickly. They follow him into Hollywood and multiple officers start chasing Gene Atkins.
00:27:04
Speaker
and You can read this in court records. This case is still ongoing, believe it or not, even though it's 2025. twenty twenty five But what the district attorney presents later is that Gene Atkins fired three shots during this high-speed chase.
00:27:20
Speaker
And he crashes his grandmother's car into a power pole over in Silver Lake. It just happens that this is in front of the Trader Joe's supermarket on Hyperion Avenue at about 3.30 in the afternoon.
00:27:34
Speaker
So for those of you who are still looking for deep dives over the holidays, this is a fun case to go read. It's absolutely tragic what he does, and it is terrible how it all unfolds.
00:27:47
Speaker
I will say this. There's a lot of video, and there are a ton of documents because this case spawned civil and criminal actions to the hill. um But once he crashes in front of that Trader Joe's,
00:28:01
Speaker
He gets out of the car and he fires three more shots at the police who are chasing him. And then he runs into the Trader Joe's. According to the LA, the police department, but also the LA County district attorney, there are two officers who fire a total of eight shots at Gene Atkins.
00:28:27
Speaker
Unfortunately, they hit and kill a store employee in the Trader Joe's named Melida Corrado, which is awful.
00:28:40
Speaker
According to the police memorandum, From the moment this starts to the moment it ends, there are between 40 and 50 people inside the grocery store. So the reason for the difference is because they can't tell exactly who got out to the front.
00:28:55
Speaker
Like there's about 10 people that seem to be almost out of the store. But Gene Atkins is going to hold hostages inside this store from about 3.30 till 6.30 so about six thirty p m And police in tactical gear are standing outside the store using numerous ways ah to try and watch and negotiate with Gene Atkins. Now, for Gene Atkins' part,
00:29:26
Speaker
He is described as having a history of mental health problems. And that same cousin in an interview, i think it's in the LA Times. I know she pops up on NBC News.
00:29:39
Speaker
She says that he was a very quiet man who was despondent about his future. And she quoted him as saying what becomes the headline of um Gene King and Sidney Kallick article in July of 2018. It says, the next thing I do, I'm going to die doing it or I'm going to jail.
00:30:00
Speaker
There are no reports that any officers during all of this are injured, by the way. But around 6.30 p.m., they finally break through and have enough of a conversation with him that they convince him to handcuff himself.
00:30:16
Speaker
And he wants to come out of the building with four the hostages. So the four hostages come out with him, and they basically act as a human shield for him to ensure that he's not shot by the police.
00:30:32
Speaker
And at that point in time, he is taken into custody. He's charged finally in August of 2018 with 51 crimes. with fifty one crimes He gets murder, two counts of attempted murder, four counts of attempted murder of a police officer or a government official, and several counts of false imprisonment of hostages. When they initially hold him in, they put him under $2 million dollars bail. And this guy was never going to make that bail. But for some reason, when they bring him in for arraignment, they raise his bail $23 million.
00:31:08
Speaker
million dollars What are they even doing there? like They're making a statement we're tough on this kind of thing. i just think it's dumb. Once you get to a certain point, you know he's not going to get out. Right.
00:31:21
Speaker
right And so that's where we sort of get into like the last parts of this case, which this is admittedly a shorter episode, but...
00:31:33
Speaker
We can read quite a bit about this case as it unfolds in the news because it's high profile. It's not really high profile because of what he did. It's high profile because Trader Joe's is involved and it's high profile because the police inadvertently kill a Trader Joe employee.
00:31:53
Speaker
So I pulled from KCAL News, which I know it got picked up by CBS. um I pulled this one article from May 3rd of 2021. The headline is Los Angeles man accused in fatal 2018 Trader Joe's shooting found competent to stand trial.
00:32:09
Speaker
And it's got this picture of Gene Atkins. He's 31 in the picture. He's in like the blue scrubs looking out from behind the the pretrial area in l L.A. County.
00:32:21
Speaker
Have you ever seen ah those courtroom areas they put them in? Yeah. Yeah. So it's got like the metal bar in front of him. It just looks like the saddest man on the planet.
00:32:32
Speaker
It says, a judge Monday found a man charged in connection with a fatal shooting at a Silver Lake Trader Joe's in 2018 is competent to stand trial. Gene Atkins, 31, previously pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of Mellie Maricela Corrado.
00:32:53
Speaker
this is That's the thing that makes this interesting for me, and it's the reason I brought it up. I got to rant about you know my Islamic terrorism in the first part of this episode, and now I get to rant a little bit about felony murder and a little bit about like how this is a domestic incident. so According to prosecutors, Atkins set off a chain of events July 21st, 2018, that led to the death of Corrado, who was fatally shot by a police officer in front of the store in the 2700 block of Hyperion Avenue.
00:33:23
Speaker
Though he was not the person who fatally shot Corrado, Atkins was charged with their killing under the theory that he triggered the events that led to the 27-year-old assistant manager's death, including allegedly shooting his 76-year-old grandmother and his 17-year-old girlfriend in South Los Angeles where before he took his grandmother's vehicle and led police on a wild chase.
Legal Debates on Police and Suspect Accountability
00:33:49
Speaker
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in December said it would not be filing charges against the officers involved, stating that they were justified in using deadly force in an attempt to stop Atkins.
00:34:02
Speaker
Corrado's family, who in 2018 filed a wrongful death suit, have publicly asked District Attorney George Kaskin, who was sworn in after this finding was made, to reevaluate whether the officers acted lawfully.
00:34:17
Speaker
Atkins is also facing 50 other charges, and they lay out these charges again, but basically they include attempted murder, murder of a peace officer, assault on a peace officer with a semi-automatic firearm, kidnapping, fleeing and pursuing peace officer's motor vehicle while driving recklessly, grand theft of an automobile, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, shooting at an occupied motor vehicle, false imprisonment of a hostage, and a general charge of mayhem.
00:34:45
Speaker
So, I wanted to start like part of the conversation here. What do you think about situations where like someone is shot in the course of all this and ultimately a completely different person is charged with murder, but the family is like both suing and asking for the officers to be charged.
00:35:10
Speaker
I don't think that he should have been charged with her murder. Yeah.
00:35:14
Speaker
No, no, i agree with that. I agree that Atkins should not be charged. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, i I don't think he should have been charged. Well, what about the officers involved? Are they... I don't know enough about it, about what happened there, but I would say probably.
00:35:34
Speaker
So, I pulled a couple of like random things here for this because, I don't know, it always makes me wonder. This is from the website taylorring.com, and... I'm going to be front. These are lawyers.
00:35:46
Speaker
um This is ah ah written by a guy named John Taylor, who's a lawyer. I wrote it February 8th of 2023. It just says, update colon, why won't the LAPD release the unedited tape of what happened to Melly Corrado?
00:36:01
Speaker
So this is like a blog post on a lawyer's site. I'm being upfront with that, but like, like it's stuff you can look up because he's going to cite things and I'm going to read a little bit of I'm also going to read the citations.
00:36:16
Speaker
It says it's been more than four years. And then he capitalizes four years since Milly Corrado lost her life and the LAPD still refuses to release the tape. After the 2018 police shootout where Corrado was caught in the crossfire, her family still awaits justice. Although the information that could give Mellie's family some closure is available in an internal LAPD report, the city refuses to release it to the family until after the civil trial is over, which is still potentially months away.
00:36:48
Speaker
As John Taylor, who represents Mellie's family in a civil suit, told ABC 7 News, it, quote, makes no sense. The video has them roll right up on Gene Atkins' vehicle and get out of the car and start shooting with no regard for what's in the background.
00:37:05
Speaker
There are people on the sidewalk. There are people coming out of the Trader Joe's. There are people inside the store. These documents, what would they jeopardize in the prosecution of Gene Atkins?
00:37:15
Speaker
He's in possession of all those documents. More than years later, Mellie's loved ones are still asking questions and looking for answers and asking to see the full uncut video of what really happened the day of her death.
Corrado Family’s Fight for Justice
00:37:27
Speaker
Per ABC7, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said the officers involved in the shooting were, quote, justified in using deadly force, end quote, in their pursuit of Atkins. But that's not where the problem lies.
00:37:41
Speaker
The problem is that Mellie Carrado died as a result of that, quote, justified force. But we can't get to the truth because the LAPD won't give us the unedited video.
00:37:52
Speaker
Even now, Atkins is the one facing charges for her death, despite the proof that it was an LAPD bullet that killed her. He recaps the event, so I'm going to do his recap here. In July 2018, a man named Gene Atkins led LAPD officers on a 14-minute long car chase, and after crashing his car, he held shoppers and employees in a Silver Lake Trader Joe hostage for hours.
00:38:18
Speaker
In the middle of these events... Atkins got into a shootout with the LAPD. One of the bullets fired by an officer hit Melita Corrado. Her family and friends and family called her Melly, and she was the store manager.
00:38:32
Speaker
By the time the hostage situation ended and Atkins was arrested, Melly Corrado was dead. We know some of how these events came to be, not from witness statements, not from social media posts, but because of footage recorded by dash cams in the officers' cars and their body cams.
00:38:49
Speaker
The proof, as they say, is on the tape. Why won't the LAPD release all of their footage? Why won't they give Melly Corrado's family, as well as everyone else, the raw videos captured by the cameras, by the helicopters above, and by the store's security cameras?
00:39:05
Speaker
Instead, the LAPD has released two slick, highly produced videos, complete with slow motion views and voice narration, neither of which shows Melly being shot by a police officer.
00:39:16
Speaker
To add further insult, the LAPD has refused to release Mellie's autopsy and have refused to answer why the LAPD and the LA District Attorney's Office ordered a toxicology report on her body.
00:39:31
Speaker
Ron Rosengarden, who is representing the family, along with John Taylor, told KTLA-5, we have not heard a reasonable explanation for why toxicology tests were ordered for her.
00:39:43
Speaker
The LAPD have claimed that they have released the two videos so far in the interest of transparency, but if that were true, why do the videos look more like professionally produced films than in-the-moment videos?
00:39:54
Speaker
Rather than act in a spirit of transparency, Mr. Taylor said at the press conference, the police have turned it into a public relations effort to shine the most favorable light on the actions of the officers that were involved in the shooting.
00:40:06
Speaker
They want to control the narrative.
00:40:11
Speaker
As Mr. Taylor explained, the officers in the pursuit car had no tactical plan, got out of the vehicle, already having made up their minds to fire their weapons without assessing the background that confronted them. They shot towards the direction of Trader Joe's. There were at least four or five visible people in front of the store and on the side of the store where the shots were fired, plus people in cars around the front of the store.
00:40:32
Speaker
Why did l LAPD fire in the direction of civilians? And why won't they release the raw footage currently in their possession? The family of Melly Corrado has issued a plea to have the footage released, and even years later, that evidence has not been forthcoming.
00:40:45
Speaker
Mellie Corrado was a very special person who loved her family and friends, said Mellie's father at a press conference. We are devastated by her loss. We have many questions about how Mellie died, but we don't have any answers.
00:40:56
Speaker
We are committed to getting those answers for Mr. Corrado, for Mellie's family, and for the people of Los Angeles. We have not forgotten about Mellie and her family. will never stop fighting for her. At Taylor and Ring, we fight for what is right and what the LAPD is doing, withholding the raw footage, is not right.
00:41:12
Speaker
We have taken on the LAPD before, and we promise you, we won't back down. Okay. we talk about that for a second? They produce these videos, right? And they release- That's a mistake. Yeah, that's a huge error. And that's not controlling the narrative. Again, same thing with the Islamic terrorists. You're making yourself look like a moron as an agency. Absolutely. And it looks just really awful. Yeah. It is the worst case scenario to not release that footage. And I promise you, the optics of not releasing it are worse than anything that could possibly be seen on that video. You're 100% right. And I don't get why i don't see that. I don't know either. but that was the thing that, like, that's how this particular story ends up on our list.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, it's pretty safe to say that an innocent bystander got shot. So I'm going to go with it probably wasn't justifiable actions. It definitely... Because there's certain things that you have to take into consideration when you are when it would be considered justifiable, right? Yeah.
00:42:20
Speaker
And the fact that an innocent bystander was killed sort of blows that right out the window. Yeah, I mean, when you sit down and you look at how different groups, when it comes to police, and and I say groups because sometimes it's the lawyers for a municipality, sometimes it's like the district attorney, sometimes it's a state agency. Realistically, and like, ah you know, ah I would say this to their face. the LAPD and the district attorney's office investigating this is a mistake and everybody on the planet knows it. Like that's the instance that you bring in the state police or you bring in the attorney general's office and you have them investigate it.
00:42:56
Speaker
Cause like you can't, like most places have like an SBI of some sort or an OSBI like where it's like a, uh, an agency that handles all of the state actions for investigating,
00:43:13
Speaker
the lower level police agencies in that area. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office has been too big for its proceeds for a really long time. And the LAPD has sort of ridden in that shadow. They do end up paying out on this. And I like i don't know how much more like you want to say about this, but it's like this is all wrong, right? It's 100% wrong. And the way you can kind of tell is, so he did hold the people and Trader Joe's hostage. Correct. Correct.
00:43:41
Speaker
Keep in mind he was pursued, right, by the police. Right. I'm not entirely certain that they knew he had shot his grandmother, did they? Or was it erratic driving? I...
00:43:53
Speaker
i don't I don't know what the initial report said. It looks like they knew gunshots had gone off for sure because of, yeah, they knew gunshots had gone off because that's in the 911 calls from at least one family member. And then he's firing as they're chasing him. So they're aware that guns are involved.
00:44:14
Speaker
Okay, well, at least it's asserted he's fired, right? Right. like they're like They have an inkling that someone is accusing him of that, of firing a gun. I don't know like how accurate that is because we're still waiting on all that.
00:44:27
Speaker
Right, but there was one death in this situation, and the police caused it. Right, so i have one more article in here.
00:44:38
Speaker
I wanted to read to you because this is like more recent-ish. ah This is August 31st, 2024. So it's still a year old, year and change old, but whatever. It's interesting.
00:44:49
Speaker
This comes out of James Bickerton and he wrote the article and then it ends up published in Newsweek. I think he's a U.S. news reporter elsewhere, but either way, it ends up in Newsweek. The title of it is Family of Trader Joe's worker mistakenly killed react to settlement. Says the family of Melly Corrado, who was mistakenly shot dead by a police officer in Trader Joe's store in Silver Lake, Los Angeles in 2018, have spoken out after reaching a $9.5 million dollars settlement with the city attorney's office on Friday.
00:45:20
Speaker
And a statement issued by their attorney, the Corrado family said, nothing will bring Mellie back to us. We are forever heartbroken by her violent death caused by those meant to protect and serve the community. We will keep her memory alive always.
00:45:32
Speaker
We hope this settlement sends a loud message to LAPD and all law enforcement agencies across the country that officers must account for their surroundings when firing their guns. We get a little bit more information about what happened.
00:45:44
Speaker
It says, Corrado, age 27, Trader Joe's assistant manager, was killed July 21st, 2018, after being hit by a bullet firing from Officer Sinlin C.' 's S-I-N-L-E-N is the first name. And then TSE is the last name.
00:46:02
Speaker
Officer C and Officer Sarah Winans had been pursuing Gene Evan Atkins, now age 34, who police allege shot and wounded his grandmother and 17-year-old girlfriend before firing on law enforcement. Atkins ran into the Trader Joe short store following a police pursuit and received a gunshot wound to the left elbow. He is currently awaiting trial. So this is August 2024, still awaiting trial.
00:46:25
Speaker
Speaking to the Associated Press, Charlene Eagland, E-G-L-E-N-D, who's Atkins' cousin, said the then 28-year-old had been arguing with his grandmother, who he lived with on and off for two or three weeks, about his girlfriend staying at her home before the shooting.
00:46:41
Speaker
According to ABC7, Los Angeles police pursued Atkins for 15 minutes, covering nine miles, after he allegedly shot his grandmother before the suspect crashed his car into a pole,
00:46:52
Speaker
and they spelled P-O-L-L, just saying, instead of P-O-L-E, near the Trader Joe's and it ran inside. Both officers insist that Atkins open fire on them during the incident, but in a handwritten note,
00:47:06
Speaker
He denied having fired any shots before crashing his cars, but said the officer still shot at him. In a sworn statement, Officer C said, i have no alternative but to fire my weapon at Gene Atkins in order to stop his deadly threat that he himself had created. I fired based upon actions and stopped when I realized he was moving into the Trader Joe's entrance to avoid striking individuals inside. Despite that fact, he was still considered a violent, fleeing felon and continued to pose an imminent threat of ah serious or great bodily injury and or death one side Trader Joe's.
00:47:41
Speaker
Winans, who fired three shots but didn't strike Corrado, said, no longer could I avoid the unfortunate need to fire my weapon to stop Gene Atkins' deadly actions. I was also forced into the situation based upon the deadly actions that Gene Atkins had demonstrated he was capable of engaging in.
00:47:59
Speaker
In December 2020, a report released by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office concluded the two officers were justified in using deadly force in an attempt to stop Atkins. So there's a big going to talk about something else that's not related. I don't know why, but i so I really honestly believe that he wasn't firing. I don't know why Yeah, like, it's one of those things where i don't know if it matters or not. Like, they're going to pile on him because they have a prosecution to protect Right, but that's why he's still awaiting trial, right?
00:48:30
Speaker
I mean, they're not going to ever be able to prove this. It's a mess, and like I'm sure they will figure out something that they can convict him of eventually. Well, I guarantee you, if it was justifiable, okay, on video, body cams, car cams, whatever, we would have seen it.
00:48:49
Speaker
So you think if it's justifiable, they release it, and and that's it? Why wouldn't you? No, it's a great question. mean, I don't I don't think there's ever been a set of body cam or whatever that's been held back that didn't have something to hide. Yeah, so the world has gotten into this content creation mode where the police do, even here, I live in Podunk Nowhere, even here, they release these really slick videos of what happened, and it's like, so typically, it's a police specialist or a spokesperson who may or may not be an officer. um That was a type of position that
00:49:25
Speaker
I interviewed for once upon a time where you're basically representing a department or agency or office and it's that person talking in front of a flag usually it's an American flag and a flag from the local district of the state yeah it's PR yeah and it's it's very it's a spin machine move and in between they give you little bits of the video and they narrate it and they put up cards to let you read along with her talking. But the truth is, we don't need that as a society.
00:49:58
Speaker
Like, that's not what we want to see. And I know it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy and like they're being transparent. It's the opposite of transparency. And particularly when you've got the videos that cut from like dash cam to in-car to body cam. That's all people want to see. Yeah. People just want the footage. Just release the six hours of footage. Do not cut it into a 30-minute movie. Exactly, because once you do that, you are trying to sell your interpretation of it. Right. And I sit through this stuff all the time.
00:50:28
Speaker
Body cam, dash cam, in-car footage is the most ridiculous thing on the planet to to edit. like You could make a cool movie out of all of that. I'm sure I've seen a couple that have come out that way. But the truth is, like once you've had an incident like this, people know.
00:50:44
Speaker
People know you're cutting out like the fact that some of the officers are racist and some of the officers are rude and and like some of the officers make serious mistakes. But when you've got somebody where it's the level of a shooting, that is the worst kind of editing that you could do because you have an innocent person who literally woke up that day.
00:51:04
Speaker
And went to her job at a grocery store. And she was killed by a cop. Shot by a police officer. And they can say that he was on this deadly rampage all they want, but he didn't kill anybody.
00:51:18
Speaker
Correct. So how deadly was it? I mean, it's almost like if we're going to get down to semantics here, it's like the cop was on a deadly rampage. A little bit, yeah. And, like, that's that's one of the things, like, I don't understand. Like, where do you get to the point that, you like, you disarm the police? Because they always rant about disarming people.
00:51:37
Speaker
But, like, is that who we should be disarming? Or, like, is it, like... you know Yeah, that's a huge, like, whole different story. But, like, it's really hard. Because, you know, they're saying all this in retrospect, right? I do realize that more than likely the officers were scared, right? Yeah.
00:51:54
Speaker
And I do realize that they probably thought that they needed to stop him. Right. But... They didn't stop him. Yeah, I always get curious who fired first and whose gun accidentally went off because it happens all the time. And they say that she got killed in the crossfire.
00:52:12
Speaker
Was there really crossfire happening? no I think a lot of times, especially if he's holding a gun, people don't know who shot the gun. Oh, yeah. I think probably this guy ran away and that gun was still in the car and they just assumed he had it. And that's how he ends up taking Hassan.
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, right. And he so he I'm just saying this entire thing, if the police hadn't shot, I don't know that he would have gone in and shot anybody in the grocery store because he didn't shoot anybody in the grocery store. That's what I was just scrolling back through while we're talking. I was going through my notes.
00:52:44
Speaker
she' the only The only person who died was the person who was shot by the police. And i think that I think that if you're in there, you assume he has a gun because that person's laying out their dead. They probably assumed had shot her. Right.
00:52:58
Speaker
But he he didn't. And that's my whole point. Like, if the police hadn't fired... Yeah. Yeah. She wouldn't have died. Okay. Now, they were anticipating, I i believe they were anticipating what they thought like a really bad dude would do, right? Yeah.
00:53:17
Speaker
I don't know how bad of a dude this was. He was arguing with his grandmother over his girlfriend. Right. Unless he was arguing with someone in the grocery store over something personal, I don't know that he was going to shoot anybody. He was not going on a tirade. Right.
00:53:32
Speaker
I don't think he did hold them hostage though. But to be fair, depending on the circumstances, which again, they didn't release footage. They have to back up the statements that he was shooting at police, depending on what the circumstances actually were in a way, he got chased into a grocery store, like being shot at by police. right So it goes both ways, right? Yeah.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how all of this would work out. like I look at it, and I've been trying to figure out what ah what could the reason be that we don't want to give this out.
00:54:09
Speaker
Because he wasn't shooting. Yeah, i think it's I think it's going to be something like they see his gun on the sidewalk, like ahead of doing it, or like his gun is in the driver's seat. or you you know I don't know why I have that feeling, but I really feel like he did you know he allegedly shot his grandmother. More than likely he did. And he raised his girlfriend, right? He was mad. yeah that he was mad like a five-year-old adult throwing a tantrum. That's what was happening. And he wasn't going to shoot people just to shoot them, right? Right.
00:54:40
Speaker
It was perceived that way. I believe he was black, was he not? Oh, yeah. He's a young black guy. Yeah. Okay. And that added to it. um I can't remember. Did he have long hair, dreaded hair, maybe? Yeah, he has dreads. Okay. And so he's got several characteristics that can stereotypically sometimes be interpreted to lend towards someone who's going to do something bad, right? Right. Right.
00:55:02
Speaker
And that's not always the case. It's not always the case they're going to do something bad, but you can make assumptions. I believe the police were scared and I believe the police were shooting because they were scared. He was at least driving erratically and he crashed yeah and then fled on foot.
00:55:18
Speaker
Right. Now he didn't stop for police. Right. Now, you know, there's some police jurisdictions. They don't even chase people if they're trying to pull somebody over.
00:55:30
Speaker
right They don't even chase them. They don't engage in the pursuit because of the danger it puts society in, like, during the chase, right? Yeah. Okay, so what does that tell you? Well, again, you know, I don't know if they knew he had shot his grandmother. It's possible they did know. And in that case, why weren't they trying to tase him or, you know, use some other means to take him down? i think I think I saw gunshots, like, in the video that they put out. I don't know...
00:55:59
Speaker
Like, before the the before the traffic accident at Trader Joe's. I think I saw gunshots, like, indicating that, like, he was firing from the car. i Maybe.
00:56:10
Speaker
Maybe. so like, i think it's a, like, i could probably get there to, like, this is justified. And... Yeah.
00:56:23
Speaker
i can't get there too you don't have to release this footage they would absolutely release it because it would proved that it was justified
00:56:34
Speaker
And that's not what's happening, right? Right. And so you can read up on this one. There's a lot of civil paperwork in this. there's a little bit of criminal paperwork. There's not a lot of resolution in terms of, like, the case against GNAC. The reason that it has gone on for so long is because they literally don't have a case. Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:55
Speaker
They've overcharged him. And, i mean, they may, I don't know about, like, his grandmother and his girlfriend, but it's going really hard to prove the other.
00:57:08
Speaker
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00:57:19
Speaker
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00:59:24
Speaker
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00:59:42
Speaker
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