“As a parent, you feel so much pain. You don’t want your kids, so young and with their whole lives ahead of them, to have their life unfairly destroyed.” Said Christopher Guardado, Andres’ father.
On Father’s Day, Cristóbal Guardado addressed hundreds of protestors, who had gathered in Gardena, California, to demand justice for Andres Guardado – an 18-year-old Latino shot and killed by police outside of an auto repair shop on June 18.
After shooting Guardado, who was working as a security guard at the shop, six times, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies reportedly seized and possibly destroyed nearby security cameras and took the DVR that stores all the video footage filmed by the surveillance cameras before obtaining a warrant.
Unión del Barrio organized the demonstration on Sunday with help from Guardado’s family and local groups, including Black Lives Matter Los Angeles.
Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, said the last-minute protest was meant to be a “brown and Black unity action” because the Black and Latino communities are victim to the same “police terrorism.”
In California, Latinos make up 39 percent of the state’s population but represented 46 percent of the people killed by police between 2016 and 2018.
Protesters marched from the site of the shooting to the Compton Sheriff’s Station with chants of “Show us the tape!” and “Assassins!” They passed through Redondo Beach Boulevard, where Andres was fatally shot.
A drum beat accompanied demonstrators as they marched, chanting and holding up signs saying, “He was only 18,” “Justice for Andres Guardado,” “No Justice No Peace” and “Defund the Police.”
