Protester wounded by LAPD reflects on 2-year legal battle, $1.25 million settlement
LOS ANGELES — Iz Sinistra was entering an exciting new chapter in life in May 2020. He was studying music under the GI Bill after four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, was about to sign a lease on a Los Angeles apartment, and felt happy and independent.
He also felt newly empowered to speak out about important social issues, which he said the Marines had always discouraged. So when George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis that month and thousands of people took to the streets of L.A. in protest, Sinistra joined them.
"I felt it was time to go do something that was right," he said.
What followed would upend Sinistra's new life.
The protest he attended that day in Pan Pacific Park turned into one of the most volatile in L.A. history. Los Angeles Police Department officers trying to disperse the crowd shot Sinistra in the head with a beanbag projectile, part of an arsenal of so-called less-lethal ammunition used for subduing suspects and quelling unrest.
The incident sent Sinistra to the hospital for four days with bleeding in his brain. He spent the next two years in a blur of medical and legal appointments as he fought to heal and to hold the city accountable.
"That was
