Police Officer Charged in Two Killings

Voluntary manslaughter charges were filed Wednesday against a veteran Compton police officer who last February fatally shot two unarmed Samoan-American brothers, striking them 19 times. Some shots were fired after the two men had slumped to the ground, authorities said.

The charges against Officer Alfred Skiles, 44, are the first in nearly a decade brought by the Los Angeles County district attorney against an on-duty law enforcement officer who killed a person. An FBI investigation into the slayings is continuing, agency spokesman John Hoos said.

Skiles, a member of the Compton Police Department for 12 years, is scheduled to be arraigned today on two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the Feb. 12 shooting deaths of Pouvi Tualaulelei, 34, and Itali Tualaulelei, 22. The brothers, according to a family attorney, were relatives of the Samoan royal family.

Their deaths became a lightning rod for Samoan-Americans throughout Southern California, who have long accused police officers of harboring negative stereotypes of them as violent and primitive, thus leading to brutal encounters.

During protests and in letters to authorities, Samoan-American leaders demanded that criminal charges be filed against Skiles, who has contended that he fired in self-defense after responding to a domestic dispute call at the Tualauleleis’ Compton home.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healy called the shootings unjustified and discounted Skiles’ assertion that he feared for his life as the Tualauleleis allegedly tried to disarm him.

“I don’t believe that is true,� Healy said, “and it’s certainly not true that both of them were trying to take his gun.�

Healy said that after the two had fallen, the officer shot Pouvi three times in the buttocks and fired three bullets into the back of the younger Itali, a scholarship student and football player at El Camino college. An autopsy report said the two men also sustained other wounds from bullets that entered from several other directions. After the first burst of gunfire, Healy said, Skiles reloaded and fired again.

Skiles is on leave and could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, Gerald Lennon, said he expects the officer to plead not guilty because “he was in the course of his duty when the incident occurred and he was in fear of his life.�

If convicted, Skiles could face a minimum three-year prison sentence and a maximum of 13 years.

Compton police officials declined to comment.

The shooting occurred after Skiles responded to a report of spousal abuse at the Tualaulelei home on North Grandee Avenue. There, he was informed by Pouvi Tualaulelei’s wife, Julie, that her husband had beaten her and driven off with their two children, who were 5 and 6 years old.

As Skiles and Julie Tualaulelei talked in the patrol car, her husband pulled into the driveway and went inside the house, leaving the two sleeping children in the car. He apparently did not see his wife and the officer. After learning of her whereabouts from his two younger brothers, who were watching television, Pouvi returned to his car and began backing down the driveway.

At that point, according to prosecutors, his alarmed wife told Skiles that she wanted to make sure her two children were all right. Instead, Skiles locked her in the patrol car and decided to inquire himself, motioning Pouvi to stop. As the two men argued, prosecutors said, Itali Tualaulelei came outside.

District attorney officials, however, refused Wednesday to provide any details of what followed next, including how the actual shooting started.

Skiles has contended that the brothers attacked him, trying to take his revolver. But family members, including another brother, Ieti Tualaulelei, said the officer opened fire while Pouvi and Itali were kneeling on the ground.

Twenty-one shell casings and a magazine still containing bullets were found at the scene, according to a police source.

District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said murder charges were not filed “because we feel we do not have sufficient evidence to prove malice, which is an element of murder.�

Melvin Belli, the San Francisco lawyer representing the Tualauleleis in a federal civil rights lawsuit, called the shootings an assassination and “the worst case I have heard of.�

Belli’s partner, Kevin McLean, said the brothers were the nephews of High Chief Ieti Tualaulelei of Western Samoa. Samoan representatives in Washington, he said, “have been keeping the pressure on this to make sure this was not covered up.�

“The Tualaulelei family and the Samoan community is very pleased this officer will be called into the criminal justice system,� McLean said.

Samoan-American activist David Barrett Cohen, one of 400 people who marched on Compton City Hall in March, praised the district attorney for bringing charges against Skiles, saying the action may have been made easier by the uproar over the Rodney G. King beating on March 3.

“This happened before the Rodney King incident, but the community response was beginning to jell when the Rodney King incident happened,� he said.

Gibbons, the spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said the last time a law enforcement officer was charged in the shooting death of a civilian was in 1982. In that case, a sheriff’s deputy faked a drug raid and shot a woman, killing her fetus. He was found guilty of second-degree murder, Gibbons said.