Volkswagen Jetta

Car Belonging to LAPD Officer Linked to Slaying Found in Pomona

Police recovered a car that belongs to a rookie Los Angeles Police Department officer who was named as a "person of interest" in a deadly shooting that occurred Friday night, officials said.

Officer Henry Solis's Volkswagen Jetta was found at 12:55 p.m. in a Pomona alley near the intersection of Main Street and Monterey Avenue, according to the Pomona Police Department, several blocks from where Salome Rodriguez Jr. was gunned down following a Friday night fistfight. 

The news came as friends of Rodriguez shared cellphone video of him dancing at a nightclub in the hours before he was shot and killed.

"We were dancing, we were laughing, after it was over we ate pizza," said Rodriguez's friend, Monique Ortiz.

Ortiz knows Rodriguez from the nightclub where they partied and drank before the shooting took place.

"We told him we'd walk him to his car, he gave me a piggyback ride," she said. "He was happy, no confrontation inside the club, nothing."

A man who identified himself as Gene recently started working with Rodriguez delivering furniture.

"It was just a day off for us so we just wanted to go out and have some fun," Gene said

Gene said both he and Rodriguez were drunk and fell asleep in Gene's Audi in a parking lot after the bars let out.

"Next thing you know when I wake up, I wake up to the cops around my car and like the paramedics taking him away," he said.

Ortiz said she received a text from Rodriguez.

"I had heard from him a half hour before. What if I woudl've texted back, you know? What if he needed something, a ride. I don't remember saying bye, because I was drunk," she said.

Neither Ortiz nor Gene say they recognize Solis.

"I've been looking at his picture ever since they posted it up on Facebook - I do not remember seeing him inside at all," Gene said.

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