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| Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
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A pair of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who were seriously injured in an ambush shooting near a Compton transit center have sued a company they claim manufactured and sold parts of the “ghost gun” used in the attack.
Deputies Claudia Apolinar and Emmanuel Perez-Perez contend in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that an “unserialized Polymer80 firearm” used in the shooting “was originally purchased as a kit in California from either Polymer80 or one of Polymer80’s third-party distributors, who sold it without performing a background check.”
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from Polymer80, which is based in Nevada.
The deputies were shot Sept. 12, 2020, while sitting in their patrol SUV parked outside a transit center in Compton. The shooting was captured on surveillance video from the station, sparking a countywide manhunt.
The suspect, Deonte Lee Murray, was arrested three days later and ballistics tests allegedly linked a handgun he discarded during a law enforcement pursuit with the attack on the deputies.
Murray, a convicted felon, was legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm.
“The shooter was able to commit the ambush shooting of the deputies because (Polymer80’s) deliberate and reckless acts created a direct and secondary market that foreseeably provided prohibited persons like the shooter with easy access to unserialized ghost guns assembled from kits and purchased without any background check,” according to the deputies’ lawsuit, which was filed Monday.
“Upon information and belief, the shooter chose to shoot the deputies with this Polymer80 ghost gun in substantial part because he knew it was unserialized and untraceable by normal means.”
The suit accuses the company of violating both federal and state firearms laws. It also states that the company is under federal investigation over the sale of gun kits.
