The 19-year-old suspect in January’s on-campus officer-involved shooting remains at a hospital nearly two months after the incident, Sheriff’s Lt. Dave Dolson said in an email today.
Dolson said that although Peyton Dingman remains at a local hospital, he is not in custody. Dolson added no charges against Dingman have been filed yet but “he is looking at a brandishing charge.”
The Sheriff’s Department Inmate Information Center showed after the shooting that the charge would be a felony. Since then, the charge has been reduced to a misdemeanor. Dolson said today it’s most likely because the gun was not real, although it looked real, and “therefore no felony charge could be charged.”
According to a Nixle alert from the Sheriff’s Department at the time, Dingman pointed an Airsoft pellet gun at two El Camino Police Department officers when they responded to the call. The pellet gun was “completely” covered in black electrical tape and had the same size and shape of a semi-automatic handgun, Dolson added.
Dingman was shot in the upper torso, according to the Sheriff’s Department. He had notes to relatives in a backpack left at the scene after the shooting and he left a suicide note at his home in Torrance, according to the department.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the two officers who responded to the shooting were identified last month as Marcus Thompson and Leroy Enriquez. At the time of the shooting, Thompson had been with the department just over six years and Enriquez had been with the department for about a year and a half, Dolson said at the time.
Dingman, who attended Bert Lynn Middle School in Torrance according to his Facebook page, was 18 years old at the time of the shooting. Sheriff’s Department records show his birthday was yesterday.
