A young criminal defense attorney on her way to a party Sunday night witnessed what she said was the worst thing she’s ever seen in her life — the execution of a surrendering suspect by a Culver City Police officer.

The killing of the African-American suspect, who was shot dead by a cop in the busy strip mall at Venice Boulevard and Motor Avenue, is being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and his identity had still not been released Tuesday because “we’re still trying to notify his next of kin,” stated Assistant Chief Ed Winter of the Coroner’s Office.

Frances Prizzia does not know the dead suspect’s name, but she knows exactly how he came to die, because she witnessed his killing from beginning to end.

Prizzia said it happened between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. Sunday. “I was sitting in the Donut King at the corner of Venice and Motor with my girlfriend when suddenly we saw a bunch of cop cars enter the parking lot,” Prizzia said. “We were sitting in front of the window and had a clear view of everything,” she continued. “I saw a greenish car with a black female driver pull up in front of us. Then I saw a Black male passenger get out of the car, with both his hands raised and all 10 of his fingers spread out — with absolutely nothing in his hands. 

“He stood there like that for a few seconds, and suddenly they just shot him for no reason! He had nothing in his hands and he did not make a single move — until he was shot. Then he twitched and fell down. There was blood all over the place; lots of blood and his girlfriend began screaming and crying, ‘You killed him! You killed him! Why did you kill him?!’” Prizzia said.

“He was shot by [what appeared to be] a young Latino cop and an older, burly cop took the Latino cop’s weapon from him and put it in the back of his patrol car,” Prizzia continued. “Then I went over to the burly cop and told him he couldn’t do that with the evidence of a crime and that the killer cop’s gun was evidence. He told me, ‘Get away, little girl.’ I became really upset, and I told him ‘I am not a little girl. I am a criminal defense attorney and have been one for five years and I am a witness to the fact that everything you’ve done here tonight was wrong.’ Then they started trying to shut me down. They had an officer named Lopez take my statement, and all he did was try to justify to me why they killed the man when, in fact, there was no justification.”

Prizzia said she ended up lecturing and arguing with the Culver City cops on the scene as to what their proper procedures should have been. “They told me have was a person who had committed crimes in the past and was suspect in others,” Prizzia said. “I told them that if he is a suspect, he is to be arrested and tried in a court of law and not gunned down in a parking lot. Then they told me the man had a gun in the backseat of the car. Then I said, ‘But he didn’t have a gun in his hand when you shot him!’ Then I questioned them as to how they knew he had gun in the backseat until they examined the backseat — after they shot him!’ They were doing everything they could to shut me up and make me go away. But I wouldn’t because it was so very wrong.”

Prizzia said she was not the only eyewitness. She said five people in the donut shop saw it and she said the shooting occurred beside a car containing three children, whose grandmother was buying sweets for them in the donut shop.

“The grandmother was hysterical when she realized her grand babies were in the line of fire,” Prizzia said. “The kids saw the whole thing and the police interviewed the oldest boy, whom I believe to have been between 7 and 9 years old. 

“But as bad as all this was, even after he was shot, the man didn’t have to die,” the attorney continued. “The Culver City Police officers took forever to get the man medical attention. He was bleeding profusely, and they just ignored him. He was still alive when the ambulance finally arrived and he could have been saved if they wanted to save him.”

Prizzia reached out to me Tuesday morning through my attorney, Anthony Willoughby, because she wanted to learn the identity of the slain man so she could contact his family and give them her account of his killing. “I knew when they shot him that they would cover it up and I couldn’t let that happen. After all, I am an officer of the court,” Prizzia said.

In pursuit of the slain man’s identity, I was sent through four county referrals before finally getting the call from Winter in the Coroner’s office about his trying to contact the man’s next of kin before releasing his name. Prizzia scoffed at that.

“They arrested the woman who was with him Sunday night. Couldn’t she have told them who his relatives are?” the attorney asked. “After his bullet-ridden body was removed, a group of people began lighting candles and writing notes at the killing site. Couldn’t one of them — if asked — tell the police about his family? No. This is not about the cops’ inability to contact relatives three days after the killing. This is about needing time to engineer a cover up of an execution,” the witness said.