RACHEL KONRAD, The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A grand jury cleared a San Jose police officer Thursday of criminal wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of a mentally ill Vietnamese woman who appeared to threaten bystanders with a vegetable peeler.
The Santa Clara County grand jury -- meeting in a rare open session in an effort to convince the region’s large Vietnamese community of the fairness of the proceeding -- deliberated for less than three hours before deciding not to indict Chad Marshall on charges of murder or manslaughter.
Two officers responded to a domestic disturbance call on July 13. But within seconds of entering the apartment that Cau Bich Tran, 25, shared with her boyfriend and their two sons, the woman brandished what appeared to be a knife or cleaver and seemed to aim it at Marshall, according to grand jury testimony.
The instrument turned out to be a dao bao, a vegetable peeler used throughout Asia that has no sharp outward edges.
Andrew Schwartz, who represents Tran’s family, said the family still planned to file a civil lawsuit against the city of San Jose, former police chief William Lansdowne and Marshall.
“The message to the community is that we should be afraid to call the police -- whether we’re in danger or being beaten up,” said Felicita Vu Ngo, a San Jose resident and spokeswoman for the Tran family.
Officials opened the grand jury to the public, only the second time in the county’s history, to smooth relations between San Jose’s police force and the region’s 83,000-member Vietnamese community, the nation’s second-largest.
Immigrants staged rallies at San Jose’s city hall throughout the summer, complaining that officers should be more culturally sensitive and the police force should hire more Vietnamese-speaking officers.