The family of an unarmed man shot and killed by deputies in Paramount earlier this year is suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, attorneys said Friday.

Oscar Ramirez, 28, was shot and killed along the railroad tracks near Paramount High School Oct. 27 after deputies responded to a report of a pending fight and were told one of the men had a handgun.

"It’s so cruel," Leticia Moreno, Ramirez’s mother, said in Spanish Friday. She said it’s the one word that comes to mind when she thinks about how her son died. "It destroys my heart."

During a conference to announce the lawsuit, Moreno clung to a birthday card from her son, which she says she found after he died.

The family said the sheriff’s department has sealed the coroner’s report and won’t tell them what led to the fatal shooting.

"I went through so much frustration and emotion and now we're just desperate for answers," Christian Ramirez said of the time since his brother’s death.



Christian Ramirez said when the family got the body for burial, they noticed four bullet wounds in Oscar Ramirez’s back. There was one in the back of his head.

"If they knew the kind of person that Oscar was, there's no way I believe they would have shot him and killed him in that manner," Christian Ramirez said.

Soon after the shooting, Ramirez’s family told NBC4 he was trying to break up a fight between two other men when police arrived.

The family has filed a formal complaint against the department but have not specified how much money they are seeking.

Leticia Moreno said that part is not important to her, but that she just want to know why her boy was shot.

In Spanish she asked, "Why did they kill my son?"