Santa Ana community marches for justice against recent police killing

On Tuesday, the Santa Ana community assembled at El Centro Cultural de México and marched to the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD), demanding justice for recent killings, including that of Noe Rodriguez at the hands of the police. 

On December 1, 2024, SAPD received a call that a man was allegedly holding a rifle in the area. Officers arrived at the intersection of Broadway and Second Street and encountered Noe Rodriguez.

Within minutes of arriving at the scene, SAPD made an order in English, “Drop the gun, or you are going to be shot,” said the officer to Rodriguez, who is a monolingual Spanish speaker. “They shot him within three minutes without giving him instructions in his own language, and they shot him over 30 times. It was a brutal killing, and his family deserves justice and answers,” said Diana Terreros, an organizer with Centro CSO Orange County. 

Noe’s family and attorneys have requested that the officers' names be released and the unedited video be made public, but SAPD has not fulfilled their request.  

The video of the officers spraying Rodriguez with over 30 bullets was posted on an Instagram account with the handle “MisSantaAna” on January 10, 2025. No one knows who runs this account or how they accessed the video, but “this is not an official SAPD page, and we don’t know who runs the page,” said Terreros. 

“It’s an unjustified situation. It’s the use of excessive force. There was no real communication with this man, Noe Rodriguez. He didn’t have an opportunity to surrender. They gave him no real opportunity. He (Noe) looked confused, startled. He looked like he didn’t understand what they were saying, and they started shooting,” Kent Henderson, the attorney representing the family of Rodriguez, told Caló News. 

Paramedics arrived fifteen minutes after the call, as announced by the organizers at the march. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and was ultimately pronounced dead. Later, authorities were able to determine that the rifle he was holding was fake. 

Rodriguez's death is not an isolated incident. On December 28, 2024, it was reported that the Anaheim Police Department shot and killed a man in his thirties who was holding a replica firearm. Last October, CBS News reported that “12 people have been shot and killed by police while in possession of a replica gun, three of them under the age of 18. Since 2014, at least 320 people have been shot and killed by police while holding replica guns.”  

In 2025, police have killed 233 people thus far nationwide, and “there have been 0 days so far in 2025” when police did not kill a person in the U.S. Of those 233, 30 are identified as Hispanic. The police killed 238 people in 2024 that were identified as Hispanic. 

The majority of the killings of Hispanic people by the police have taken place in the Southwest region of the U.S.

“Now I am father to my daughters and a fighter for justice. Since Noe’s life was taken by Santa Ana Police, his daughters are deprived of the joy of growing up next to their father, of living moments with him. They are deprived of the possibility of their father seeing them as accomplished women and seeing their triumphs,” said Erika Armenta, Rodriguez’s wife, at the march. “My daughters cry for the loss of their father because he will never return.” 

The protest concluded with a message of continued struggle. Organizers said they would continue working with Armenta, her family, and her attorneys to seek justice for Rodriguez. 

“I’ve been representing families of those who lost loved ones because a police officer used excessive force that resulted in killing loved ones for thirty-five years. Sadly, there are many of these cases throughout the country, and we will continue to fight for Noe Rodriguez and his family,” said attorney Henderson.