Crime & Safety
DA Probes Officer-Involved Shooting That Left Peninsula Teen Dead
As the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office and an Oakland civil rights lawyer conduct concurrent investigations, Derrick Gaines's family finds a support network in Bay Area.
Investigations of the June 5 shooting of 15-year-old South San Francisco youth are underway. San Mateo District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said that he expects his staff to have results from their investigation in about two weeks, at which point, Wagstaffe and his staff will decide whether the officer’s actions call for criminal charges.
Oakland-based attorney John Burris, , is conducting a concurrent investigation to determine whether the officer’s actions were justified or if they fall under the category of civil misconduct. Burris said that if he finds violation of civil rights, he will file a lawsuit against the city.
According to a member of Gaines’s immediate family, representatives from the will meet with five members of Gaines’s family today. The meeting is a result of the Department reaching out to the family at the end of last month.
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A coroner’s report for Gaines has not been released.
Since the incident, members of Gaines’s family have found a support network with other Bay Area residents whose kids also died in officer-involved shootings, including relatives of Oscar Grant, who was shot at the Fruitvale BART station in 2009.
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family members of Kenneth Harding, Jr., a 19-year-old who was shot in San Francisco during a confrontation with police a year ago, rallied to commemorate Harding and to protest police violence. Rachel Guido Red, Gaines’s mother, attended the event.
“We’re not the only [people] who are suffering right now,” said Michael Red, Gaines’s step father. “There are other mothers who’ve lost children in the same fashion, and they’re supporting each other.”
