Andy Lopez lived in a working-class, predominantly Latino neighborhood on the west side of Santa Rosa. The Moorland Avenue area sits between Highway 12 and the city's commercial corridors, a grid of modest homes and open lots where kids walked to school and played outside. On that October afternoon, Lopez was returning a friend's airsoft gun -- a replica designed to look realistic, the kind sold at sporting goods stores across the country. The orange barrel tip required by federal import law had been broken off at some point, though airsoft and pellet rifles are technically exempt from that marking requirement. Under California law, carrying an imitation firearm without a brightly colored exterior in public was itself a violation, but it was a law that few thirteen-year-olds -- or their parents -- would have known about. Lopez could not have seen the deputies approaching; they came from behind, in a marked patrol car.

Deputy Gelhaus, a 24-year veteran of the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, was also an Iraq War veteran and a firearms instructor who taught at Arizona's Gunsite Academy. He had never shot a suspect before. Investigators determined that Gelhaus fired when Lopez turned and appeared to raise what looked like an assault weapon. The autopsy told a more complicated story: at least four rounds entered from the rear, one from the side as Lopez was turning. On July 7, 2014, District Attorney Jill Ravitch announced that no charges would be filed. She referred the case to the Sonoma County Grand Jury, which declined to review it, citing lack of expertise. A year later, in July 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice reached the same conclusion -- insufficient evidence that Gelhaus had willfully used excessive force. For the Lopez family and their supporters, the legal system had failed to hold anyone accountable for the death of a child.

The protests began almost immediately and did not stop for months. On October 25, more than a hundred people -- mostly middle and high school students -- gathered at Santa Rosa City Hall. On November 5, two hundred marched through the city, joined by activist Cindy Sheehan. Four days later, rallies spread statewide: Santa Rosa, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Merced. The demonstrators called Lopez's death a case of police brutality and racial profiling, pointing out that the boy was Latino and that the deputies had approached from behind without giving him a realistic chance to respond. When Gelhaus was cleared to return to desk duty on December 9, fresh waves of protest erupted. Confrontations escalated -- demonstrators blocked Highway 101, vandalized the front door of the Sonoma County Jail, and clashed with officers outside City Hall. In February 2014, protesters wearing 'RIP Andy Lopez' shirts were asked to remove them or leave the Santa Rosa Plaza mall; the head of mall security was later fired over the incident.

The Lopez family's federal civil rights lawsuit, filed on November 4, 2013, argued that Gelhaus had shot their son without reasonable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The case wound through the courts for five years. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Sonoma County's petition to dismiss, clearing the path for a trial. Six months later, the county settled for $3 million. By then, the vacant lot where Lopez had been walking was no longer vacant. In December 2013, a memorial appeared near the site of his death. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved funding for a permanent park in March 2016, and Andy's Unity Park opened in June 2018 on 4.22 acres at a final cost of $3.7 million. On June 2, 2020 -- what would have been Lopez's twentieth birthday -- a memorial march wound through Santa Rosa, coinciding with the nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd. The park remains, a quiet green space on the west side where a boy once walked home with a toy gun.