A lawyer representing a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer who died in a training exercise said he believes the police officer was targeted by his colleagues who allegedly committed gang rape.
Officer Houston Tipping died in May as a result of an alleged training accident, according to Yahoo News, and his family filed a wrongful death and civil rights violation suit the following month.
Bradley Gage, the attorney for Tipping’s family, said the alleged accident occurred while Tipping was investigating a gang rape committed by his fellow officers.
One of the accused officers was present at the time of Tipping’s death, Gage said in a press conference.
“The victim claimed that she was raped by four different people, all LAPD officers,” Gage said at the press conference. “She knew the names of those officers because they were in uniform and they had their name tags on.”
Gage went on to say that the name of one of the officers allegedly on the name tag appeared to match the name of an officer present at the bicycle training where Tipping died.
Tipping was a five-year veteran of the LAPD when he died. The police department claimed that his death was due to a “catastrophic spinal cord injury.”
However, Tipping’s mother alleges that his injuries were a result of repeated blows to the head, which she said were consistent with a mob assault, causing breaks to the neck, which eventually lead to his death.
“When you have information that the motivation comes from an alleged sexual assault, it’s being investigated by Officer Tipping now you understand why,” Gage said. “You have a situation where officers are going to be interested in at least scaring Officer Tipping to prevent him from carrying out this investigation, where they could get prosecuted criminally, and or lose their jobs.”