Oakland: CHP to pay $7 million over controversial 2020 fatal shooting by three officers

The three officers who fired dozens of shots at 23-year-old Erik Salgado claimed he tried to ram them with a stolen Dodge Charger, which the previous District Attorney's office concluded they couldn't disprove.

OAKLAND — The California Highway Patrol will pay $7 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging wrongdoing by three officers who in 2020 shot and killed a 23-year-old man and wounded his pregnant girlfriend, court records show.

The suit, filed by the family of 23-year-old Erik Salgado, sought damages from the CHP over the June 2, 2020 shooting that led to protests and calls for criminal charges against the officers. Salgado’s death was one of two controversial Bay Area police shootings that came in the days after the murder of George Floyd, where the region erupted with protests, rioting, and looting.

Salgado and his girlfriend were driving in a Dodge Charger that had been reported stolen from a San Leandro dealership weeks earlier when CHP Sgt. Richard Henderson, and officers Eric Hulbert and Donald Saputa fired a total of 18 shots at the vehicle. The officers, part of an anti-car theft task force, would later claim the Dodge attempted to ram them.

Henderson, who used to work in Southern California, was one of two officers who shot and killed a Fullerton man in 2016, under remarkably similar circumstances as Salgado’s death.

Last year, the previous Alameda County District Attorney administration under Nancy O’Malley declined to charge the officers, but stopped short of accepting their version of events, writing in a report that prosecutors were “unable to refute” what the officers claimed and that “questions remain” about exactly what happened.

The new DA, Pamela Price, has already re-opened several police killings that had been closed without charges under O’Malley. Civil rights attorney John Burris, who represented Salgado’s girlfriend and family in the lawsuit, called on Price to re-open this case, describing it as “complete overkill” and “a massacre.”

“The officers fired their guns as if Salgado was a shooting gallery target,” Burris said in a news release. “The officers’ conduct was inhumane and a reckless disregard for human life for which they should be criminally prosecuted.”

A spokeswoman for Price’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry into whether Price would re-open the case.

The whopping $7 million settlement came before integral stages of the case, including motions by the defense to reduce or dismiss the allegations. Attorneys for CHP, employed by the California Attorney General’s office, denied the claims in boilerplate court papers full of legalese.

The settlement is on par with other police killings around the Bay Area. In 2020, the city of Vallejo paid out $5.7 million over the shooting death of city resident Ronell Foster by Officer Ryan McMahon, who was later fired over his role in the police fatal shooting of Willie McCoy in 2019.

Later that year, the city of Pittsburg paid a $7.3 million settlement to the family of Humberto Martinez, who died after officers placed him in a carotid hold and sat on top of him after a brief foot chase into a local residence. Two of the officers were later charged with wire fraud in an alleged college degree scam.

A federal lawsuit against Vallejo officers who killed 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa on the same day Salgado was killed, in Vallejo, is still pending.