Jermaine Clodor Petit, the disabled Air Force veteran shot in the back by LAPD while holding a car part in an incident that made national headlines in 2022, has died. He was just 41 years old.
The cause of death is unknown.
Although Petit had physically recovered from his wounds from the 2022 shooting – including the broken jaw that kept him hospitalized for nearly a month – the traumatic nature of the encounter with LAPD appears to have exacerbated his schizophrenia and PTSD.
Court records indicate that his mother had petitioned to act as his Guardian ad Litem in early 2023. By October of 2023, his daughter Ashlyn says, he had fallen off the grid completely.
Petit had voluntarily returned to the streets before, she explained in a worried email to Streetsblog last April, but he'd never been out of touch for so long.
Per the medical examiner, when Petit was finally discovered in his Lancaster home several months later, his remains were "skeletonized," leaving them unable to determine how or when he had died. The date of death assigned to him was August 4, 2024.
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Petit was suing LAPD over the July 18, 2022, shooting at the time of his passing.
Officers Nelson Martinez and Daryl Glover Jr. had first approached Petit on foot and with guns drawn on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard after 911 callers reported an uncooperative and – according to one caller – potentially armed unhoused was man digging through residents’ trash in Leimert Park.
The officers had lowered their guns just as quickly after Martinez got a better look at the object in Petit's hand and de-escalated them both. “It’s not a gun, bro,” he told Glover.
But then Sergeant Brett Hayhoe had swooped in.
Within seconds of pulling up alongside Petit, Hayhoe had fired off two rounds through his passenger side window while continuing to drive with one hand. Glover, who had raised his gun back up at the sound of gunfire, then fired one round.
When questioned by investigators about his reasoning, Hayhoe offered a harrowing account. He said he fired the first shot because Petit had turned to face him – "literally looking straight in the eye with me" – and had assumed a “close contact [shooting] position" with his elbow cocked and his hand wrapped "around an object in a pistol-like grip."
He fired the second shot, he said, because Petit "didn't go down" and "still, in my opinion, was in a position to shoot."
Glover's story was even more harrowing. And more heroic: he said he opened fire because he thought he heard Petit shooting at his sergeant and wanted to intervene in the "gunfight" to keep Petit from killing him.
Neither account is remotely true, as this reporter's meticulous breakdown of incident footage from the officers' own body cams was able to show.
Petit never made any threatening pauses or gestures.
He never stopped to assume any kind of stance.
His main objective throughout the entirety of the encounter seems to have been to put as much distance between himself and the police as possible. He'd been subjected to violence in previous run-ins with the police and was wary of them. To that end, his pace goes from a brisk walk, to a trot, to a brief side shuffle, to full-on flight.
Moreover, the timestamps on the officers' body cams indicate that three full seconds elapsed between Petit's brief side shuffle – which is when he turned to look at Hayhoe, appeared startled to spot Hayhoe's gun pointed at his chest, and broke into a run – and the moment Hayhoe actually opened fire (below). Petit was still in flight when Hayhoe fired the second shot.
The body cams also show that Glover did not open fire until after Petit had already fallen face-first to the ground. Security camera footage of this moment is even more damning: Glover bounces up and down – as if in excitement – as he fires at Petit’s crumpled figure.
Those obvious and easily verifiable discrepancies didn’t stop the City Attorney or the officers from denying all wrongdoing to the court.
In response to Petit's lawsuit, they argued the officers had behaved reasonably, had not deprived Petit of his constitutional rights (and therefore were entitled to qualified immunity), were not negligent, and were not responsible for any lapses in medical care. [The complaint alleged the officers' failure to immediately render aid and the nearly 15-minute delay in the arrival of EMTs further traumatized Petit.]
The officers’ response to the amended complaint Ashlyn filed this past December (after succeeding her father as plaintiff), was especially disparaging.
Addressing her directly, they declared that “the acts complained of by [Ashlyn] were provoked by Plaintiff’s deceased father himself.”
Petit's violation of "numerous provisions of the California Penal Code," "fail[ure] to comply with the lawful orders of law enforcement," and "fail[ure] to exercise ordinary care, caution, and prudence for his own welfare," they claimed, had led to "the happening of the alleged injuries."
Again, it was all cruelly untrue.
Despite the department's concerted effort to depict Petit as a violent, armed threat, they had struggled to come up with charges they could justify to the D.A. [They finally settled on "brandishing a replica firearm."]
And in July of 2023, the Police Commission had actually faulted the officers for their tactics and ruled Hayhoe "Out of Policy" for the shooting. By pulling up alongside Petit the way that he did, the Commission concluded, Hayhoe had – unnecessarily – made himself physically vulnerable, which was what ultimately compelled him to open fire.
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How this will all play out in court remains to be seen.
The parties are scheduled to attempt mediation later this year. Should that fail, the case will go to trial in February of 2026.
In the meanwhile, the family is struggling coming to terms with the loss of a beloved brother, cousin, father, son, and friend as well as the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his death.
At a moving memorial service for him last October, friends and family gathered to remember him at the First AME Church, where Petit had been baptized as a child.
They recalled what a happy kid he had been, how the extended family had all looked out for each other, and what an integral part Petit played in their childhood memories.
"There's never been a time in my life where I didn't know Jermaine," his cousin Jason said, recounting how inseparable he, Jermaine, and Jermell (Petit's brother) had been as children.
Turning to Ashlyn, who lives out of state, he reassured her that they had continued to look out for her father, even when he was struggling and on the street.
It hadn't been easy.
According to Petit's mother, who spoke out about some of those challenges back in 2019, keeping her son safe, housed, and on his medication regimen had proven increasingly difficult since his discharge from the Air Force in 2005.
The strange behavior he tended to exhibit when he was in crisis generally attracted law enforcement instead of assistance. Help did finally arrive about seven years ago, after a jaywalking stop ended violently, with Sheriff's deputies hitting Petit with a patrol car, tackling him, and tasing him. A deputy with ties to the VA helped get Petit transferred from jail to the Phoenix House, where he got treatment for his addiction issues and his PTSD. Post-rehab, Petit was set up with housing in Lancaster. But it appears he struggled to sustain his health and, soon enough, was back in the streets of the neighborhoods he had grown up in.
Still, his family didn't give up on him.
"No matter what his circumstance was, there was always people there that loved him, wanted to see him do good, he had a support system...," Jason continued. "There wasn't never a time I didn't see my little cousin - no matter where he was - I wouldn't stop the car" to make sure he was OK, to tell him he was loved, and to give him a hug.
Echoing sentiments expressed by the others that spoke, he said that learning about the condition Petit had been found in regularly reduced him to tears.
Seeing everyone who had rallied to support the family was a testament to how significant their bonds were but also how deeply they all felt this loss. "I don't know what we gonna do," he sighed. "Because there will never be another Jermaine in this world."
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For more on the Petit case, find previous coverage here:
- LAPD Sergeant Fired at Jermaine Petit from Inside Patrol Vehicle, Sparking Contagious Fire from Officer Who Knew Petit Was Unarmed
- LAPD Describes Car Part as Resembling “Nonfunctioning Firearm” During Contentious Town Hall on Leimert Park Shooting
- LAPD Chief’s Report on Sergeant’s Drive-by Shooting of Unarmed Vet Embraces Falsehoods, Glosses over Recklessness
- A lengthy twitter thread breaking down the case in real time:
