An LAPD patrol car in downtown Los Angeles, photographed in 2011. Photo: John Liu via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
A tourist from Germany was driving a luxury rental car back to its drop-off point in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon when he drove into somebody else’s gunfight. “My car got hit,” he could be heard saying at the scene, KTLA reported. “I got hit in the arm.”
The Los Angeles Police Department’s version of events, as ABC7 reported it, starts at about 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 29 in an alley between South Figueroa and West Francisco streets. Police said a group of men opened fire on a man there, the man pulled out his own gun and shot back, and the shooters kept firing at him as they left in a vehicle. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition. LAPD said a bystander sitting in a nearby vehicle was also struck by gunfire and was treated and released at the scene. KTLA put the shooting near West 8th and Francisco streets at around 3 p.m., and City News Service, in a report carried by MyNewsLA, placed it near 845 S. Figueroa St., with the wounded man standing behind a Smart & Final.
ABC7 said police are looking for three men who got into a black four-door BMW and drove out through the alley toward Figueroa. KTLA reported early Wednesday that no suspect description had been released and that no one had been arrested, so the two stations’ accounts don’t fully line up yet. Police told ABC7 they did not know whether the shooting was gang-related. A witness, Joshua Ramirez, told KTLA he thought six to eight people were involved. As of Wednesday morning, the LAPD newsroom had posted no release on the shooting.
A green McLaren, a rental car, and what the reports do and don’t say
ABC7’s video from the scene showed a green-and-black McLaren with bullet holes in its windshield. Ramirez told KTLA he ran to help a wounded man who was bleeding heavily near a green McLaren. KTLA’s story does not name the make of the tourist’s rental, and neither station said who the McLaren belonged to. What is on the record is that at least one vehicle took rounds and that a visitor’s rental car was one of the cars hit.
The McLaren makes this the second police scene involving the brand in Southern California this month, after the Irvine crash that killed two people. But for the man from Germany, the make of the car matters less than the paperwork he signed when he picked it up.
California caps what a rental company can bill a renter, and the cap depends on the cause
KTLA reported that the tourist appeared to have only a slight injury to his left arm. His next problem is the rental contract, and California law has already set the ceiling on it. Civil Code Section 1939.03 lists the only kinds of damage a rental company and a renter may agree the renter will pay for, and it sorts them by cause:
- Damage from a collision, whatever caused the collision: up to the car’s fair market value.
- Theft: up to fair market value, and only if the company proves by clear and convincing evidence that the driver failed to exercise ordinary care.
- Vandalism that has nothing to do with a theft: up to $500.
- On top of those, towing, storage, and impound fees the company paid, if the renter is liable for the damage, plus an administrative charge.
The companion section, 1939.05, limits that administrative charge to $150 when the parts-and-labor estimate is more than $1,500, and nothing at all when the repair is $100 or less. Towing and storage bills are a familiar LA headache, as the city’s crackdown on bandit tow operators showed, but under this statute a rental company can pass them on only when the renter owes for the damage in the first place.
The statute never mentions gunfire. The closest category is vandalism, which Penal Code Section 594 defines as maliciously damaging or destroying property that isn’t yours. Bullets fired at another man by people driving away from the scene fit that far better than a collision does. If a rental company reads it the same way, the renter’s share of the glass and bodywork is $500 plus an administrative fee of no more than $150, however large the repair estimate. That is Backfire News’s reading of the text, not a court’s, and a company could argue the damage belongs in another category.
Two limits apply. The law is a ceiling, so a contract can charge a renter less but not more. It also applies only to what Section 1939.01 calls a rental company, meaning a business renting passenger vehicles to the public, and to rentals of less than 30 days. A private sale, a loan from a friend, or a long-term lease sits outside it.
The state will pay for his arm, not for the car
Being from Germany doesn’t shut the tourist out of California’s crime-victim fund. The California Victim Compensation Board says a non-resident victimized in California can qualify. The board covers medical and dental treatment, counseling, and lost income, up to $70,000 in total, and it pays only after insurance and other sources are used up. It excludes personal property losses other than medically necessary items such as eyeglasses and hearing aids. A shot-up car doesn’t qualify, which leaves the rental statute as the main protection a renter in his position has.
The California laws written for shots fired from and at cars
No one has been arrested or charged, and the facts that would decide any charge haven’t been made public. But California’s Penal Code has sections aimed squarely at the kind of shooting LAPD described, in which police said the gunmen kept firing as they fled in a vehicle.
Section 26100(c) makes it a felony, carrying three, five, or seven years in state prison, to willfully and maliciously fire a gun from a motor vehicle at a person who isn’t in a vehicle. Subsection (b) reaches the driver who never touches a trigger: a driver or owner who knowingly lets someone else fire from the car faces up to a year in county jail or 16 months, two years, or three years in state prison. Section 246 makes it a separate felony, also three, five, or seven years, to maliciously and willfully fire at an occupied motor vehicle. The bystander was in a vehicle when he was hit, according to LAPD’s account to ABC7, though whether that section applies depends on where the shooters were aiming.
The man police identified as the target also fired. LAPD has not said publicly whether he was carrying legally or whether his shots are part of its investigation.
What comes next for the investigation and the renter
LAPD is still looking for the shooters, and no update on the critically wounded man’s condition had been made public as of Wednesday morning. For the tourist, the police report is the document that matters most. It is what shows the damage came from a crime and not from a collision, and under 1939.03 that difference can decide whether his share of the bill is capped at $500 or runs as high as what the car is worth.
When a rental car is shot up while the person renting it is a crime victim, should California keep the renter’s share at $500 and leave the rest to the rental company, or should people who choose to rent luxury cars carry more of that risk themselves?
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