Vallejo police officer shot at teen’s back in November, video shows

VALLEJO — Footage of a Vallejo police shooting in November shows Vallejo police Corporal Matthew Komoda fire twice at a juvenile suspect’s back who was running away from him while carrying a gun.

“He pointed a gun at me!” Komoda yelled immediately after firing. But Solano County Deputy Public Defender Nick Filloy, who played the video in court on Monday, wrote in a brief that the suspect was “in no way pointing it at Komoda.”

The city of Vallejo has refused to release the video of the shooting, arguing that it is confidential because the person Komoda shot is a minor. The Solano County District Attorney’s Office also obtained a protective order to prevent the city from releasing it.

The video was played during a preliminary hearing for a second suspect in the case, 18-year-old Zion Israel Smith, who has been charged as an accessory to the robbery that spurred a police chase and the shooting.

Solano County Superior Court Judge Tim Kam on Tuesday ordered Smith released from the Solano County Jail. He found there was enough evidence to charge Smith with second-degree robbery, evading and other charges, but also found that the recent high school graduate with no criminal history should return home to his family in Fairfield. 

Filloy argued in a 16-page brief that Smith’s $185,000 bond was more than twice what it should be. Smith appeared in court for his hearings Monday and Tuesday wearing a green striped jail uniform, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to look at his family.   

Smith’s release requires him to be monitored by GPS, submit to a police search without a warrant, and that he not come to Vallejo unless for court hearings. Smith’s arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 18.

Alleged accessory to robbery

Prosecutors allege Smith was the getaway driver during a mugging committed around 11:30 a.m. Nov. 20. Two brothers were walking into Seafood City on Sonoma Boulevard when a white Lexus cut them off and two people wearing hoodies and ski masks got out, pointed guns with extended magazines in their faces, and made off with a wallet and cellphone, according to Solano County DA’s investigator Don Fisch. The elder brother called 911 and allegedly took a picture of the fleeing vehicle, Fisch testified Monday. 

Komoda, Vallejo police’s shift commander at the time, responded to the call, saw the suspect vehicle traveling the opposite direction on Sonoma, and made a U-turn, according to Kathryn Lenke, another DA’s investigator.

Filloy wrote in his motion to reduce bail that video shows Komoda overtake two other pursuing police vehicles at nearly 100 mph and drive in oncoming traffic to become the lead police vehicle in the chase before the Lexus ran a red light and crashed into two other vehicles. The Lexus occupants fled on foot. 

Komoda opened his car door before his vehicle made a complete stop and immediately engaged with the suspects, Lenke testified. 

“Get your hands up! Get your fucking hands up!” Komoda can be heard yelling on his body camera while approaching the car. “He’s got a gun,” Komoda yelled three times before firing twice, hitting the 17-year-old suspect in the arm. 

Lenke testified she believed the teen pointed a gun at Komoda. But after she was shown videos from Komoda’s body camera and surveillance video from a nearby house, she couldn’t point out when the suspect pointed a gun at him. 

“When he ultimately decided to shoot, the subject had his back turned to him,” Lenke testified.  

‘He pointed a gun at me!’

The brief preliminary hearing this week was the latest in Filloy’s in-depth investigation into Vallejo police violence, which has documented the department’s history of marking on-duty shootings by bending the tips of their star-shaped badges.

Citing 50 police shootings in the last 25 years, Filloy’s brief to have Smith’s bail reduced painted a picture of a violent police department incapable of investigating shootings in a timely manner and a district attorney’s office that has turned a blind eye to problems in the department. 

Komoda yelling “He pointed a gun at me!” immediately after firing echoes a similar declaration Vallejo Det. Jarrett Tonn made immediately after fatally shooting Sean Moneterrosa in June 2020, the department’s last fatal shooting. Monterrosa did not have a gun.

In his brief, Filloy detailed Komoda’s career in Vallejo since he transferred from the Oakland Police Department in 2014, along with two other officers with a documented history of on-duty violence: his longtime partner David McLaughlin and his twin brother, Ryan McLaughlin.

That same year, then-Vallejo Police Chief Andrew Bidou learned that officers were marking their shootings with badge-bending, but chose not to do anything about it, according to testimony from a whistleblower former Vallejo police captain.

Attorneys have argued that the badge bending practice incentivized Vallejo police to shoot. “At one point its rate of officer involved shootings was 37 times the national average per capita,” Filloy wrote. 

Komoda’s first shooting occurred in August 2016, when he and David McLaughlin chased a speeding vehicle through residential streets, cornering a white Audi. Not knowing if anyone in the car was armed, both officers fired into the car. 

Then-Sgt. Michael Kent Tribble bent both Komoda and McLaughlin’s badges at a bar across the street from police headquarters to make them feel better about missing the driver of the Audi, Tribble testified in March 2022.

Tribble was also the department’s use of force expert for the review of that shooting. In a two-page report completed two years later, Tribble only faulted one point in the shooting: that the bullets weren’t powerful enough to penetrate through the car door. 

Nicknamed “Captain Taser” by prosecutors, Tribble testified that he brought the badge-bending tradition to Vallejo from the Concord Police Department. Tribble transferred with his brother Todd in 2003. Kent Tribble would eventually be promoted to lieutenant and Todd Trible to captain. Both retired within the last few years. 

In August 2017, Komoda, McLaughlin and three other officers pursued Jeffrey Barboa at more than 100 mph into Richmond, where they shot and killed him. 

The review of that shooting found several problems, including not considering less lethal options and having too many officers making commands at the same time. But Filloy noted it was conducted a year after the shooting, when California law would forbid an officer from being disciplined. 

Regardless, Komoda was not punished for his role in the shootings, but rather promoted, a common trend for Vallejo police involved in shootings. 

Komoda’s third on-duty shooting occurred in November 2018, again following a high-speed pursuit. That pursuit ended in front of an Oakland school that was in session where the driver, Dominic Milano, exchanged gunfire with several Vallejo officers, including Komoda. Milano was shot once in the back of the head, survived, and is currently facing an attempted murder charge for allegedly shooting at Komoda. 

Filloy subpoenaed current and former Vallejo police to testify in court about badge-bending in two days of hearings in March 2022 related to the Milano shooting, which have been the only public hearings on the practice since it was publicly revealed three years ago. Komoda acknowledged being part of the department’s widespread badge-bending history, but claimed to be a “victim” of the practice because Tribble had done it without his permission. 

Filloy called Komoda’s testimony “self-serving and not credible.” Solano County Judge Daniel Healy pointed out that Komoda did not report the practice to superiors and called the characterization that he was a victim of the practice “insane.”

The city of Vallejo hired former Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano to conduct an investigation into the tradition. Healy said his final report appeared to help cover up rather than shed light into the matter, but the city continues to withhold it from the public, saying it’s a personnel record and not subject to public disclosure laws. 

Questioning the DA’s task force

After the Monterossa shooting, which happened amid protests over the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, Vallejo police faced national scrutiny. In response, the DA’s office created the Solano County Major Crimes Task Force, which uses officers from outside agencies to investigate when police in the county  shoot or kill someone. 

One of the people tasked to investigate Komoda’s shooting in November was former Vallejo police Sgt. Robert Greenberg, now an investigator with the DA’s office, who testified on Monday and Tuesday about Smith’s arrest.

While he was a Vallejo officer, an investigation found that Greenberg used indecent or derogatory language and engaged in conduct unbecoming of an officer when he referred to former police Chief Shawny Williams, the city’s first and only Black police chief, as “Black Jesus” in a private conversation. Greenberg left the Vallejo Police Department in late 2020.

Greenberg testified that Vallejo Police Officer Jamie Escalante was off-duty in the area when he heard of the robbery over the radio in his personal car. He saw a suspect in a maroon jacket flee the scene to a nearby laundromat and come out shortly after without the jacket, which “raised Officer Escalante’s inquisitiveness,” Greenberg said. 

Escalanete “thought he changed out of the maroon jacket and dumped it,” Greenberg testified, adding Escalante “challenged” the suspect before he fled. 

Greenberg said police searched the area and found Smith in a nearby yard. He was allegedly wearing the same clothes as a person captured on camera fleeing from the white Lexus, which was allegedly stolen from San Pablo the night before. 

Questioned by police later, Smith allegedly said he was in Vallejo to see family and used the bathroom at the laundromat and only ran after he heard the shooting and was confronted by “an undercover cop,” Greenberg testified. Greenberg said video shows Smith run from an alley into the laundromat, not hanging out in front, as he initially said. 

Under questioning by Filloy, Greenberg said he was friends with Komoda since he joined Vallejo police. Filloy questioned Greenberg about a break in the tape of Komoda’s interview and Greenberg’s involvement in investigating one of Komoda’s prior shootings, but Deputy District Attorney Kevin Shok objected to their relevance, which Kam sustained. 

Kam also curtailed Filloy’s questions to other investigators on the DA’s task force, such as why Komoda sped to become the lead driver in the chase, whether that contributed to a driver needing to be hospitalized, and whether investigators found Komoda’s statements to them to be credible.