Former ER actress Vanessa Marquez fatally shot by police

CNN reports on the police shooting of actress Vanessa Marquez

(Image credit: CNN/Screenshot)

last updated 1 September 2018

Actress Vanessa Marquez, best known for her role as a nurse on the medical drama ER, was killed by police officers in California Thursday, the South Pasadena Police Department confirmed Friday.

The police were performing a welfare check on Marquez, 49, who was observed to be having seizures and a mental health crisis. She picked up a BB gun the officers said they believed to be a semiautomatic handgun, and police opened fire. Marquez was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. No officers were injured, and their body camera footage will not be released for at least half a year while the shooting is investigated.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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