Black salesman testifies off-duty Pasadena officer pulled gun on him
City News Service

PUBLISHED: December 26, 2018 at 5:20 pm | UPDATED: December 26, 2018 at 5:21 pm
Categories:Local News

A black salesman testified Wednesday that an off-duty Pasadena police officer aimed a gun at him during what the plaintiff claims was a racially motivated confrontation which began when he went to the policeman’s Santa Clarita home to try to sell him a security system.

Omar Segura said Officer Sam Priyamal De Sylva pointed the weapon “straight at my head,” and that he did not know at the time that the defendant was an off-duty policeman.

“It was a very surrealistic experience,” the 37-year-old Stevenson Ranch resident said. “I couldn’t comprehend how this could have occurred.”

Segura, the son of Panamanian immigrants, said he had no criminal record and had never been arrested before. He said his only prior contact with law enforcement came several years earlier when he was confronted at gunpoint at a service station by officers who said he matched the description of a man accused of robbing a different service station.

Segura was testifying on his own behalf in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial of his civil rights lawsuit against the 45-year-old De Sylva, who has denied any of his actions were racially motivated.

Segura said he went to the officer’s home about 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 2, 2015. The officer told Segura, “Nobody wants you here,” according to the suit he filed in July 2015.

https://www.sgvtribune.com/2018/12/26/black-salesman-testifies-off-duty-pasadena-officer-pulled-gun-on-him/amp/