Michael Byoune, 19, was killed early Sunday by two officers who fired on the vehicle he was riding in near Manchester and Crenshaw boulevards, apparently believing gunfire was coming from the car.
The driver, Larry White, also 19, was injured, and another passenger, Chris Larkin, 21, was grazed by the officers' bullets.
"I won't go so far as to call it a mistake," Seabrooks said during an afternoon news conference at the police station. "The process that the officers went through had a very tragic outcome."
Seabrooks identified the officers as Brian Ragan, a 5 1/2 -year veteran, and Roman Fernandez, who has been with the department less than a year.
In July of 2008, a 38 year-old postal worker named Kevin Wilks — an Inglewood resident, and father of two young chidren — was shot and killed when police officers knocked on his door shortly after midnight in response to a 911 call reporting a man and a woman fighting. Mr. Wilks unwisely answered the door with an unloaded gun in his hand. The same Inglewood police officer who shot Michael Byoune fired two shots into Wilks’s chest. For this wrongful death, Wilks’ family members have received a total settlement of $1.7 million. The officer responsible for the deaths of Byounne and Wilks was relieved of his duties in 2010 for conduct unrelated to the shootings.