LOS ANGELES — She had been in the United States for less than a year, but already her principal at a tech-focused charter school in Los Angeles knew her as a strong student in math and physics.
In the days leading up to Christmas, 14-year-old Valentina Orellana Peralta talked about her life with her father, who had been planning to visit from Chile for the holiday. She wanted to take him to a Lakers game to see LeBron James play. She had ordered a skateboard and wanted to head back to school with moves to show off.
On their way to a Burlington store in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday to shop for a Christmas dress, Ms. Orellana Peralta talked to her mother about her bigger dreams, too — of attending college. Above all, the teen longed to become an American citizen.
But it was in the United States that those dreams were cut short, Ms. Orellana Peralta’s parents said through tears on Tuesday, their voices disintegrating into sobs at a news conference outside the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department.
In what the authorities have described as a horrific mistake, Ms. Orellana Peralta was killed by a police bullet that ricocheted off the floor of the store in North Hollywood as an officer opened fire at Daniel Elena Lopez, 24. Mr. Elena Lopez, surveillance footage showed, had been attacking shoppers with a bike lock before they arrived.
“This is what my daughter found here: death,” said Juan Pablo Orellana Larenas, her father, flanked by the family’s attorneys, led by Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who has represented the families of high-profile victims of police killings around the country, including George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Soledad Peralta, Ms. Orellana Peralta’s mother, recounted how she had been trying on clothes with her daughter in a dressing room as a commotion started outside. They stayed there to hide. Her daughter, she recalled, locked the door to protect them both.
As the loud noises continued outside, they huddled together and prayed. Then suddenly, Ms. Peralta recalled, they were both knocked to the ground in what felt like an explosion. She saw her daughter’s limp body on the floor and began screaming for help — a chilling sound that was audible in officers’ body camera videos of the incident. The girl died in her mother’s arms.
