Two weeks after officers shot and wounded bestselling author Jillian Lauren, the wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, outside her Los Angeles home, the LAPD released dramatic bodycam and security video Friday that appears to show Lauren racking and firing a gun while standing in her backyard.
In the montage of multiple bodycam video recordings, multiple officers are heard yelling repeatedly at a woman identified by the LAPD as Lauren. They’re standing behind a fence, so the woman is not visible at the height of the chest-level video. More than 10 times, the officers shout at the woman to drop her gun. Toward the end of the exchange, one officer identifies himself as “police” while another shouts that he’s with the California Highway Patrol.
Separate video from Lauren’s home surveillance system gives another perspective. It shows her exiting her house holding a black handgun and walking around the perimeter, looking high and low. The video appears to show her manipulating and firing the gun, but it’s recorded from a distance and is soundless. After what appears to be a slight recoil, Lauren walks away, looking relatively calm. According to the police body-worn footage, as soon an an officer warned, “Oh, she racked it,” police opened fire, unloading more than a half-dozen, ear-splitting shots.
The LAPD shared the footage on the department’s YouTube channel Friday afternoon, editing it into a nearly 22-minute presentation to share what they described as the state of evidence so far in the high-profile case, which remains under investigation. The incident happened around 3:55 p.m. on April 8, the LAPD said. Officers flooded the area around Lauren’s home in a neighborhood known as Eagle Rock because they were looking for several hit-and-run suspects who fled a nearby traffic accident and were thought to be hiding in yards.
About an hour after the shooting, Lauren exited her home and was arrested without incident, police said. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of her non-life-threatening gunshot wound on her arm. She was later booked in absentia on suspicion of attempted murder. She was granted release on bail and has a court date set for April 30, online booking records confirm.
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“While in the rear yard of [one] residence, the officers saw a woman in an adjacent rear yard, armed with a handgun,” LAPD Commander Alex Chogyoji says in the new video released Friday. He refers to Lauren by her married name, Shriner, though she is known professionally by Lauren.
“The officers gave Shriner repeated verbal commands to drop the handgun, however, she did not comply,” Chogyoji says. “Moments later, Shriner racked the handgun, pointed it at the officers and fired, resulting in an officer involved shooting.”
Chogyoji says investigators recovered a 9mm Glock handgun and a spent shell casing from the residence. The YouTube video also includes multiple 911 calls related to the incident. One appears to be from someone who was in the home with Lauren after she was shot. The individual tells the operator that Lauren was shot by someone amid a police manhunt. Lauren is heard talking in the background, explaining what happened. “I had my gun, and he said, ‘Put down that gun. Put down that gun.’ I said, ‘Put down your fucking gun.’ And then he shot me,” Lauren says. “There are three men out at the other side of this fence here.”
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Lauren, 51, did not respond to a request for comment on the video made public Friday. She released her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, in 2010, and her second, Everything You Ever Wanted, in May 2015. Both books, released under the name Jillian Lauren, are New York Times bestsellers.
Weezer, meanwhile, performed at Coachella Weekend One as planned, despite the incident.
