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Alvaro Duran Venegas: Killed By Santa Clarita Sheriffs in 2019

Alvaro Duran Venegas in an undated photo with his son. (Source)

September 6, 2021 ~ By Shari Rose

Venegas was an unarmed farmworker having a mental health emergency when a deputy shot him to death

On September 12, 2019, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station received a call about a Latino man walking on the side of Rye Canyon Road and yelling to himself. A deputy responded to the call and found Alvaro Duran Venegas walking by himself and experiencing a mental health emergency.

The deputy alleges that Venegas managed to take his radio and taser when approached by police and radioed for backup. More deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station soon appeared on the scene to confront Venegas.

During some sort of scuffle (police continue to withhold details), a deputy shot Venegas multiple times in the chest. The 35-year-old farmworker died at the scene. He left behind a young son.

Sheriffs Fail To Notify Mental Health Teams To Prevent Deadly Force

In 2015, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors created a special group of mental health professionals, called the Mental Evaluation Team, who are mandated to respond to calls with mental health patients alongside deputies to reduce police shootings. However, none were present when police killed Venegas.

As of the publishing of this article, the identities of the deputies involved in Venegas’ death remain a secret. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has still not released a public report into his death, which is something they are legally required to do when a person dies in police custody.

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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which was not involved in the shooting, publicly stated that one of the deputies responding to the call received a “facial injury” when confronting Venegas.

Venegas’ Family Speaks Out

Alvaro Duran Venegas lived in Bakersfield and Napa working pistachio fields before moving to Vacaville and ending up in the Santa Clarita Valley. In 2012, Venegas was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He married a woman named Mireya Segura the same year, and they had a son together.

The couple divorced in 2018, and Venegas’ paranoia steadily worsened. Segura says she moved to Minnesota with their son after the divorce. She learned of her ex-husband’s death from another family member.

In April 2019, Venegas grew increasingly worried that cameras were in his room and that people were always watching him. Segura says that Venegas spent a week in a mental health facility a few months before he was killed.

This story about Alvaro Duran Venegas is part of a larger project that looks at recent police shootings of Latinos in Los Angeles.

Shari Rose

Owner of Blurred Bylines💖💜💙

I created Blurred Bylines in an effort to bring stories from marginalized perspectives into the national conversation. As a former copy editor at the largest newspapers in Arizona and Colorado, I’ve seen first-hand the potential of accurate and accessible information to change minds and affect national policy.

My stories focus on individuals fighting for justice and their own rights as Americans, survivors of violent crime who rebuilt their lives after tragedy, shifting political trends that seek to strip the LGBTQ+ community and other minority groups of their freedoms, and forgotten figures in U.S. history whose fights for equality persist today.

Through writing these articles, I stumbled upon the power of search engine optimization (SEO) to attract interested audiences to my writing. In addition to the ad-free and paywall-free stories I write at Blurred Bylines, I also perform SEO services for businesses, nonprofits, and fellow freelancers around the country so they can grow their organizations through search engines.

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