Kami Stevens, 40

Dec. 26, 2007, 4:27 p.m.

Kami Stevens, a 40-year-old white woman, was shot and killed by Long Beach police at 1021 Coronado Ave. on Wednesday, Dec. 26, according to authorities.

Officers had gone to the location after getting a call about a dispute. When they arrived, they found Stevens distraught and on the roof, according to a police news release.

Officers could see that she had a handgun and tried to negotiate with her, the release said. Officers said she pointed her weapon at them and they fired at her.

She was taken to a hospital where she died.

-- Megan Garvey

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Two reader comments

My daughter, Kami Noelle Stevens did not have a gun in her hand. Long Beach Police were advised she had access only to a toy, a pellet gun.
Our key witnesses who were there and observed the whole incident stated she did not point the pellet gun at any of the officers. The woman officer first shot my daughter in the thigh. For no reason other than provocation. Kami obviously did not shoot back since she didn't have a gun...and they were aware of that. Then they got their big game rifle out with an ACOG scope put her in their sites and blew the life out of her.
Kami had at least five or six emotional shocks prior to the shock of her partner that left her unexpectedly showing up with police in tow to retrieve her truck and to serve my daughter the day after Christmas, with a restraining order.
On December 19 this partner left without a word with another person taking all of my daughter's possessions including her tiny dog. Kami was devastated. She had an emotional breakdown and ended up in a 72 hour hold where they treated her for a blood sugar level over 500, When I picked Kami up she was heart-broken that she had gone to pieces. Her life was not a bed of roses and she had worked steadily to make amends and to live the life she hoped to live with her beloved animals. She longed to live on some land of her own.
Kami was an artist with water colors and oils and pencil, she was a gardener supreme and tried to launch a landscape business for small apartments, she was a red-head and a trickster all of her life.
I have written a much longer story about her but don't have time to put it here. Kami was kind and gentle with children and animals. She didn't have a safety net of people though. If she had had a safety net of friends when disaster struck she could have reached out to them.
She was an exceptional human being .
Her sister a Master Sgt.USAF, another sister , a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, her older brother an Electrical Engineer, another brother and sister both licensed vocational nurses another sister a para-legal all loved her.. I read the 300 page police report and they made her to be nothing short of a creeping, bizarre, white-haired, mentally ill individual. The LBPD violated her consitutional rights by not having a swat team to negotiate with Kami. She didn't want to die. She asked for someone to talk to her. She was never, no matter how the LBPD protests, a threat. Maybe if she hadn't bleached her hair and cut it just before her murder or maybe it was the Dragon Tattoo on her neck and face, maybe if she'd remained a red-head it all would have turned out differently.
Well, this isn't the end. Its not over yet..The Long Beach Police are trained to kill rather than negotiate or to shoot in the back if their "commands" are not acknowledged and no amount of training will change their attitudes.

— Theresa A. Stevens Oct. 10, 2012 at 12:11 p.m.