Police in Los Angeles fatally shot a former actress from the show “ER”
on Thursday after she grabbed a BB gun while they were responding to a
welfare check at her apartment, authorities said.
Vanessa Marquez, 49, who played a nurse on the hit
1990s television show, died at the hospital after being shot in the
torso, officials said.
The episode unfolded at
about 1:45 p.m. when three police officers and a mental-health clinician
tried to check on Marquez at her apartment in a three-apartment
building in Pasadena. According to Los Angeles Times, they had been summoned to her apartment by her landlord, who was concerned about her.
The
officers found that she was having medical problems, including
seizures, Lt. Joe Mendoza of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
told reporters.
“It appeared that the female
was gravely disabled,” Mendoza said. Police said that the officers
suspected that she could be suffering from mental-health issues and said
that she appeared to be unable to care for herself.
The
group tried to communicate with her, Mendoza said, but she was very
uncooperative. They spoke with her for more than an hour and half before
she “armed herself” with a BB gun that resembled a semiautomatic
handgun and pointed it at officers, Mendoza said. The shooting happened
on the landing at the top of the stairs to her apartment.
At
least one of the officers fired, striking Marquez in the chest, Mendoza
said. He did not give details about how many shots were fired. The
Times reported that there was evidence of several bullet holes at her
apartment complex. The officers, who were not identified, were not
injured but were undergoing routine medical examinations, Mendoza said.
Police declined to provide photographs of the BB gun they said Marquez wielded.
At least 679 people have been fatally shot by police in 2018, according to a database maintained by The Washington Post.
[Fatal Force: 679 people have been shot and killed by police in 2018]
Marquez
had a relatively prolific acting career in the 1990s; she appeared in
27 “ER” episodes, the film “Stand and Deliver” and such television
series as “Malcolm & Eddie,” “Seinfeld” and “Melrose Place.”
Her
acting career seemed to have slowed in recent decades, but she made
waves last fall when she accused George Clooney of blacklisting her
after she had spoken up about alleged harassment on the set of “ER.”
Clooney said that, as an actor, he had no role in the show’s casting
decisions.
According to Variety,
Marquez said that she suffered from immune disorders, including celiac
disease, and that she experienced chronic pain and was “homebound.”
“A
person only has so much strength and I’m afraid I’ve used all mine up,”
she wrote in a social media post in January 2017. “Why couldn’t my
dream have lasted for more than just those few years?”
source : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/08/31/former-er-actress-vanessa-marquez-fatally-shot-by-police-doing-wellness-check/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.83594a423e2c
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