SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - The woman who was shot in the forehead by a police bean bag during Saturday's protest in La Mesa is slowly recovering but her attorney told 10News that the family is still desperate for details from police about what happened.
10News has video of 59-year-old Leslie Furcron as she was recording a Facebook Live. She is heard yelling and then the phone drops and the screen goes black.
“She was struck in the forehead with a ballistic bean bag projectile,” said attorney Dante Pride during Thursday’s interview with 10News.
Pride said Furcron was among the thousands of people in front of the La Mesa Police Department. He said that she was peacefully protesting police violence and the killing of George Floyd when he said that it all turned to chaos and an officer fired at Furcron.
On Wednesday, the department said that once officers deemed the gathering to be an unlawful assembly, they began to use measures to disperse protestors, including tear gas and bean bag rounds.
Furcron was placed in a medically induced coma with a breathing tube, which was just removed.
“On June 3rd, they took the tube out of Ms. Furcron’s mouth. She is still is unable to speak at this point and she did have a surgery I believe on the 2nd to repair the damage to her forehead,” added Pride.
He said that doctors still don’t know if she’ll lose an eye.
On Thursday afternoon, La Mesa Police reported that the investigation is ongoing and there are no new details to release.
Pride said he believes that a third party should be investigating the incident and that the officer who fired the bean bag should face criminal charges if it's deemed appropriate. “There should never be a point in time where an officer should shoot a metal projectile bean bag from an elevated position down on a crowd. That is dangerous and it can kill people and it almost killed Ms. Furcron,” he added.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez tweeted about the use of less lethal weapons on protestors. Her tweet reads, “In response to recent days filled with images of peaceful protestors maimed by rubber bullets, we will be introducing legislation to set clear standards on how law enforcement should (and shouldn’t) use these weapons. On Thursday, her office sent 10News the following statement:
“No one who is simply exercising their right to protest should face possible injury or death because officers are indiscriminately firing rubber bullets into a crowd. Breaking a city-imposed curfew is not a sufficient basis for use of rubber bullets. Crowd control where there is no rioting is not proper grounds to use rubber bullets. It is past time for the State of California to set clear standards on when and how these bullets are used by law enforcement.”
