Bay Area police killing: California's top cop investigating Newark shooting of Elmer Lopez Castaneda

NEWARK - Sevgi Fernandez's gut turned as the police body camera footage unfolded.

Fernandez, founder of the Bay Area police accountability nonprofit Together We Stand, watched as officers confronted 19-year-old Newark resident Elmer Lopez-Castaneda during a traffic stop here on a stolen car this spring.

The footage shows officers opening fire on the teenager after police say he "ignored officers' commands" and grabbed from his waistband what they thought was a firearm, but was actually a replica airsoft pistol.

To Fernandez, the footage, which was released in May by the Fremont Police Department, does not clearly show whether Lopez-Castaneda grabbed the airsoft aun
What is clear is it was not aimed at anybody at the time they riddled him with bullets," Fernandez said, noting Lopez-Castaneda's back was turned toward officers at the time he was shot. She added, "They murdered him unnecessarily."

Fernandez-whose organization was formed after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and advocates for victims of police brutality and racism-joins civil rights attorneys who are questioning the actions of officers in the April 13 shooting of Lopez-Castaneda, who police have described as a carjacking suspect in a case where a car had been stolen at knifepoint earlier in the year.

James Cook, an attorney for the high-profile law offices of John L. Burris in Oakland, and Mark Merin, a Sacramento-based lawyer who regularly handles cases of alleged police misconduct, reviewed the publicly released body-cam footage of the incident last month at Bay Area News Group's request.

They say Lopez-Castaneda was met with possibly confusing commands by officers and did not pose an immediate threat before he was gunned down.