California cops shot and killed a Hollywood actress Thursday afternoon after a 90-minute standoff prompted by police conducting a welfare check.
Vanessa Marquez, 49, played the role of Wendy Goldman on the television series ER alongside George Clooney during the 1990s.
On Thursday, South Pasadena police say they received a call about a woman suffering from seizures, who turned out to be Marquez.
But they say Marquez was “extremely uncooperative,” resulting in a 90-minute standoff that ended when police say she pointed a BB gun at them.
> According to the South Pasadenan:
> Lt. Joe Mendoza, of the L.A. Sheriff’s homicide bureau, described the incident to reporters during a 5 p.m. press conference, saying officers were called to the scene by a landlord who reported that the woman was in some kind of trouble. Police said they had been called to the woman’s residence in the past for help.
> “At the time [of the shooting] there was an LA County mental health clinician here with the officers,” Mendoza said. “They began to communicate with her, she became very uncooperative and during that contact she armed herself with a handgun, she pointed it at the officers and an officer-involved shooting occurred.”
> The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident, which is routine for all officer-involved shootings that occur in cities within LA County.
> Police say the shooting unfolded shortly before 2 p.m., inside the two-story, craftsman-style home. Police said the home was divided into three apartments and the victim lived in one of the units.
> Mendoza said they later recovered a BB-style gun that “resembled a semi-automatic handgun.”
> Mendoza said the woman “was undergoing some medical problems, some seizures, it appeared that the female was gravely disabled.”
Marquez, who also appeared in the 1988 movie, Stand and Deliver, had been posting about her struggles lately with celiac disease and seizures on Facebook.
