On June 3, 2006, around 10:30
p.m., Los Angeles Police Department Southwest Area Officer Kristina Ripatti and
her partner, Officer Joe Meyer, were patrolling in the Exposition Park area of
South Los Angeles. A man ran directly
in front of their police car forcing the officers to slow their vehicle to
avoid hitting him. Ripatti and Meyer exited their vehicle and followed the
suspect, 52-year-old James Fenton McNeal.
As McNeal reached the front
porch of a nearby residence he pointed a gun at Ripatti and fired. Officer
Ripatti was struck twice by the gunfire, leaving her paralyzed from the chest
down. Officer Meyer returned fire killing McNeal.
Unknown to the officers
McNeal had just committed a robbery at a nearby gas station. McNeal, a career criminal, had served
multiple prison terms for multiple violent crimes, including armed robbery and
murder.
Kristina Ripatti is married
to LAPD Police Officer Tim Pearce, a police academy classmate and former
partner of Officer Ripatti. He was
one of the officers who responded to Ripatti's help call and arrived at the
shooting scene, as his wife lay critically wounded.
Reporter Brent Hopkins and photographer Hans Gutknecht
spent over a year documenting Kristina Ripatti and husband Tim Pearce as they
put their lives back together after the tragic shooting that left her in a
wheelchair.