OAKLAND — Just days after protests erupted nationwide over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, California Highway Patrol officers shot and killed an apparently unarmed Oakland man following a traffic stop. The community outrage that quickly built around the killing was compounded by the CHP’s refusal to say anything about the circumstances of the shooting or the officers involved.

Now the Bay Area News Group has learned that one of the officers was Sgt. Richard Henderson, who had shot and killed another unarmed young man in a strikingly similar incident in Southern California four years earlier. Law enforcement investigators cleared him in the earlier shooting, but the judge in an ongoing civil lawsuit has suggested Henderson and his partner may have used excessive force.

“I find it disturbing,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing the family of the Oakland shooting victim, when told of Henderson’s track record. “The question is, has he been properly evaluated or trained, or has he been given free latitude to engage in this wild shooting?”

The revelation about Henderson adds significant context to what little is publicly known about the June 6 killing of Erik Salgado, 23. To date information about the shooting has come only from Burris, and from a brief statement issued three days after the incident by Oakland police, who are investigating the shooting alongside the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

According to OPD, CHP officers that night spotted a red Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat driving recklessly. They checked the license plate, identifying it as one of 74 vehicles stolen days earlier from a San Leandro dealership, and stopped the car.

Authorities have said Salgado rammed the unmarked CHP vehicles, and three officers responded by pumping 40 shots at the Challenger, with one firing through the windshield. Salgado was killed instantly, and his passenger and girlfriend, Brianna Colombo, also 23, was wounded. Burris said Salgado and Colombo were cornered and may not have realized the vehicles pursuing them were law enforcement.

Burris said Salgado’s body was riddled with 18 gunshot wounds, and “that’s just what we could count.” Thirteen bullets appeared to have struck him in the back, he said.

OAKLAND, CA – JUNE 08: A photo of Erik Salgado is seen at a memorial where he was shot in the 9600 block of Cherry Street in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, June 8, 2020. Salgado, 23, was shot and killed by California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers and his pregnant girlfriend was wounded on June 6. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) 

“This was a wrongful, outrageous shooting,” Burris said. “No officer was in danger that would justify the high-level use of force. This at best was a car theft.”

Two law enforcement sources identified Henderson to this news organization as one of the officers involved but did not name the other two officers.

It is not the first time Henderson has faced such scrutiny. In July 2016, he and his CHP partner at the time shot to death Pedro Villanueva, 19, in the Orange County city of Fullerton.

The shootings of Villanueva and Salgado are strikingly similar, according to records of the earlier incident reviewed by this news organization. Both were unarmed Latino men inside vehicles that had been pursued by CHP undercover units. Attorneys and family members of both men have questioned if they realized the detectives were police before they were shot numerous times.

Pedro Villanueva, 19, sits on the back of his family’s Chevrolet Silverado. Villanueva was shot and killed by California Highway Patrol officers in July 2016. (Courtesy of Kiesel Law LLP) 

After the Southern California shooting, public records show Henderson moved to Northern California and continued working in an undercover CHP unit, now as a sergeant. Attempts to reach Henderson were unsuccessful, and a note left at his home earlier this week went unanswered.

CHP declined to comment for this story, but a spokesperson did confirm that Henderson is a current CHP employee assigned to Golden Gate Division in the Bay Area, beginning on April 1, 2018.

Although state public records law requires law enforcement agencies to release identities of officers involved in fatal shootings, CHP cited an exemption that allows agencies to withhold the names in cases where disclosure could create a danger to the officers. However, CHP — an agency with a long history of withholding public records — has declined to provide details about threats against the officers, as the law requires.

Much more is known about Henderson’s role in the Villanueva shooting, as a civil lawsuit by Villanueva’s family against Henderson, his partner, Sgt. John Cleveland, and the CHP inches closer to a possible jury trial. But critical questions about the shooting remain in dispute.

On July 3, 2016, Henderson and Cleveland were working undercover with the Southern Division Investigative Services Unit, monitoring a small sideshow in a Santa Fe Springs swap meet parking lot. Villanueva was in his red Chevrolet pickup truck with a friend, Francisco Orozco Jr., and as part of the sideshow made an “illegal maneuver,” according to court records.

The undercover cops attempted to stop Villanueva, but he drove away, hitting speeds of 50 to 70 mph as he headed toward Fullerton. Cleveland cut off the lights and sirens of their vehicle as he and Henderson trailed Villanueva, and called for police backup while Villanueva ran at least three red lights, the officers testified. Orozco later testified that he and Villanueva did not think the unmarked Ford Taurus pursuing them was a police car, describing its lights as “orange” and its siren as making a “short screeching noise not typical of a police siren.”

Villanueva stopped on a dead-end residential street near the Fullerton Municipal Airport, and then turned his car around to face the Taurus. The two sides disagree about what happened next, with officers insisting their lives were in danger as the pickup truck headed toward their car, and Orozco and a third-party witness saying there was no such threat.

The red Chevrolet Silverado truck Pedro Villanueva, 19, was in when he was shot and killed by California Highway Patrol officers in July 2016, is riddled with bullet holes. (Courtesy of Kiesel Law LLP) 

Cleveland and Henderson got out of the car, and immediately drew their firearms. Henderson said he yelled “police” and commanded Villanueva to show his hands. The truck began to roll forward, with its tires turned in the direction of Cleveland, who stood at the driver’s side of the Taurus. Henderson would later tell investigators he feared Villanueva was going to run over his partner.

Henderson fired 12 times and Cleveland fired twice, wounding the 19-year-old Villanueva in the head, neck and torso.

But Orozco testified that the truck began to roll forward at a speed of less than five miles per hour, and that there was more than enough space for Villanueva to pass the Taurus and continue down the street, according to a summary of the shooting a judge in the civil case wrote last year. Neither side disputes the truck was moving slowly.

A witness testified they thought that Villanueva and Orozco were “being jacked,” or robbed. Multiple witnesses also said they heard Henderson say “stop motherf—er” before the shooting; Orozco said he only heard “police” and did not see police insignia on the officers’ vests until after the shots were fired.

On Jan. 10, 2017, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office cleared Henderson and Cleveland of criminal wrongdoing.

The Villanueva family’s lawsuit is now under review in California appellate court, after U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton refused to dismiss the case, as requested by attorneys representing the CHP. In an order written last year, Staton wrote “it is heavily disputed whether Henderson and Cleveland told Villanueva to stop the car before the shooting or gave him sufficient time to respond.”

“Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, a reasonable jury could conclude that Cleveland and Henderson employed excessive force when they shot Villanueva and Orozco,” the judge wrote.

In the case of Salgado’s death, Burris, along with attorneys Benjamin Nisenbaum and James Chanin, have sued CHP and are awaiting more details about what happened on the night of June 6.

According to the lawsuit, Salgado tried to pass one of the unmarked CHP cars in the 9600 block of Cherry Street but slightly bumped it, before backing up and hitting a car behind him. It is unclear if Salgado knew he was surrounded by police officers.

The Salgado family’s attorneys say one of the officers then got out of their car and stood in front of the Dodge, and the others were positioned on either side of the car. The plainclothes officer yelled for Salgado to turn off the car’s engine and later began firing through the windshield without warning, Burris said, while two other officers fired from the sides of the car.

“This kid was not wanted for murder or a serious offense,” Burris said in an interview. After looking at the shooting scene, Burris said it was clear “there was no regard for the people in that neighborhood.”

“It was a horrible display of police power,” he said.