The Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) has established a fundraising campaign to help support the families of slain Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana. Donate here.
By Suzie Ziegler
EL MONTE, Calif. — Diana Flores gave a tearful apology on CBS Los Angeles this week after her husband fatally shot two El Monte police officers. Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana were investigating a possible stabbing at a motel when Justin Flores shot them on June 14. The gunman also died.
“I am so deeply sorry,” Flores said in her interview with CBS Los Angeles. “I’m so, so sorry. They didn’t deserve that, or their families. They really didn’t.”
Flores says her husband was abusing her and had stabbed her the day before he shot Paredes and Santana. Flores was staying at the motel to get away from her husband, but he found her and confronted her, according to NBC Los Angeles. Paredes and Santana arrived shortly after.
“They were trying to help me,” Flores said.
Flores also said she had warned the officers about her husband.
“I told them before they went in the room, ‘Don’t go in, he has a gun.’ And they still went in,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt in this. The only person getting hurt was me and now two other innocents.”
Flores said her husband was “not in his right state of mind at all.”
“This wasn’t my husband. This was a monster,” she told CBS Los Angeles.