Family demands charges in shooting death of Keith Porter in Los Angeles

Relatives of Keith Porter Jr. and community advocates gathered at the Hall of Justice on July 15 to press Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to charge the off-duty federal agent who fatally shot Porter in Northridge. The family’s push turned a long-running homicide review into a direct test of whether prosecutors believe the shooting can be justified as self-defense or should be treated as a chargeable killing.

Porter, 43, was killed shortly after 11:30 p.m. on December 31, 2025, in the 17700 block of Roscoe Boulevard, near the Village Pointe Apartments. Los Angeles police initially described the call as a report of a man firing rifle rounds into the air. Months later, the case remained unresolved even as the family renewed public pressure at the Hall of Justice with backing from Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, the NAACP, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, legal representatives, and other community organizations.

The legal question now sits with the District Attorney’s Office and its Justice System Integrity Division, which reviews alleged criminal conduct involving law-enforcement personnel. By late June, reporting said the Los Angeles Police Department had completed its investigation and turned the case over for charging review. Prosecutors would have to decide whether the evidence supports the federal agent’s account, whether Porter posed an imminent threat, and whether the use of deadly force was legally justified.

That central dispute has not narrowed. The Department of Homeland Security said the off-duty ICE agent heard gunshots and confronted Porter. Porter’s family and their attorney have disputed that account and said there was no evidence Porter fired toward the agent. Some coverage also said the family rejected the characterization of Porter as an active shooter, while other reports noted that Porter may have been firing celebratory shots into the air.

The family first raised concerns at a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting in January, then held a vigil for Porter in the community where he was raised. Court records filed in an unrelated custody dispute later appeared to identify the off-duty agent as Brian Palacios, after earlier reports had described him as unidentified.

For now, the case remains a charging-threshold fight: one dead man, one off-duty federal agent, and a district attorney’s office deciding whether the facts support a homicide filing or leave the shooting inside a self-defense claim that Porter’s family says the record does not sustain.