FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MARIA VENTURA, individually and 

on behalf of the Estate of Omar 

Ventura and the Heirs of Omar 

Ventura; O. V., Maria Ventura, as 

guardian ad litem; J. V., Maria 

Ventura, as guardian ad litem,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

JENNIFER RUTLEDGE, Officer; CITY 

OF PORTERVILLE,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 19-16626

D.C. No.

1:17-cv-00237-

DAD-SKO

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Dale A. Drozd, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted September 2, 2020*

Pasadena, California

Filed October 22, 2020

* The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision 

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
2 VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE

Before: Sandra S. Ikuta and Mark J. Bennett, Circuit 

Judges, and Douglas P. Woodlock,** District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Bennett

SUMMARY***

Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment to a police officer, on the basis of qualified 

immunity, in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 

alleging that the officer used excessive deadly force when 

she shot plaintiff’s son, Omar Ventura.

The district court found that no controlling precedent had 

clearly established that Omar’s right under the Fourth 

Amendment to be free from the excessive use of deadly force 

by police would be violated when he was shot and killed as 

he advanced toward an individual he had earlier that day 

assaulted, while carrying a drawn knife and while defying 

specific police orders to stop.

The panel held that the Supreme Court’s decision in 

Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152 (2018) showed that, 

as of 2010, there was no clearly established law 

demonstrating that Officer Rutledge’s use of deadly force 

** The Honorable Douglas P. Woodlock, United States District 

Judge for the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.

*** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE 3

was unconstitutional. The panel further held that the cases 

cited by appellant subsequent to Kisela did not “squarely 

govern” the facts here. Omar was advancing with a knife 

toward a woman whom he had reportedly just assaulted. He 

ignored Officer Rutledge’s repeated commands to stop and 

a warning that she would shoot. None of the cases plaintiff 

cited involved an officer acting under similar circumstances 

as Officer Rutledge, and therefore, plaintiff failed to show 

that it was clearly established that Officer Rutledge’s actions 

amounted to constitutionally excessive force.

COUNSEL

Kevin G. Little, Law Office of Kevin G. Little, Fresno, 

California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Bruce D. Praet (argued), Ferguson Praet & Sherman, Santa 

Ana, California, for Defendants-Appellees.

OPINION

BENNETT, Circuit Judge:

Maria Ventura, individually and on behalf of the Estate 

of Omar Ventura and the Heirs of Omar Ventura, appeals the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment to Officer 

Jennifer Rutledge and the City of Porterville based on 

qualified immunity. The only issue before us is whether the 

district court properly determined that Officer Rutledge is 

entitled to qualified immunity from Ventura’s Fourth 

Amendment claim stemming from the shooting of her son, 

Omar Ventura (“Omar”). We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.
4 VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE

I.

The following facts are undisputed. On December 24, 

2015, Martha Andrade, the mother of Omar’s children, 

called 911 and reported that Omar had hit Andrade and his 

mother, Plaintiff Ventura, and had smashed Andrade’s 

vehicle’s window. Officer Rutledge responded to the 911 

call, which was classified as a violent domestic disturbance. 

When Officer Rutledge arrived at the home, Omar was not 

present. While Officer Rutledge interviewed Andrade, Omar 

started walking up the street toward the home. Andrade 

identified Omar to Officer Rutledge, pointing to him and 

exclaiming “that’s him.” Andrade moved behind trash cans 

in the driveway as Omar continued to approach. Officer 

Rutledge issued several orders for Omar to “stop.” Despite 

these orders, Omar continued to advance toward Andrade 

and took out a knife from his pocket. Continuing to approach 

Andrade with knife in hand, Omar asked, “Is this what you 

wanted?” Officer Rutledge then shouted a warning to Omar 

to “[s]top or I’ll shoot.” When Omar did not stop, Officer 

Rutledge fired two shots at him. The shots killed Omar. At 

oral argument before the district court, the parties agreed that 

Omar got within 10–15 feet of Andrade before Officer 

Rutledge fired.

The district court found that no controlling precedent had 

“clearly establish[ed] that Omar’s right under the Fourth 

Amendment to be free from the excessive use of deadly force 

by police would be violated when he was shot and killed as 

he advanced toward an individual he had earlier that day 

assaulted, while carrying a drawn knife and while defying 

specific police orders to stop.” We agree.
VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE 5

II.

“We review de novo both the grant of summary 

judgment and the conclusion that a[n officer] is entitled to 

qualified immunity.” C.F. ex rel. Farnan v. Capistrano 

Unified Sch. Dist., 654 F.3d 975, 983 (9th Cir. 2011). We 

view the evidence and draw all inferences in the light most 

favorable to the non-moving party to determine whether any 

issues of material fact remain and whether the district court 

correctly applied the law. See id.

“Qualified immunity attaches when an [officer’s] 

conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or 

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would 

have known.” Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152 

(2018) (quoting White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548, 551 (2017) 

(per curiam)). Clearly established law exists when “‘[t]he 

contours of [a] right [are] sufficiently clear’ that every 

‘reasonable [officer] would have understood that what [she] 

is doing violates that right.’” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 

731, 741 (2011) (first three alterations in original) (quoting 

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)). The 

precedent establishing this right must place the question 

“beyond debate.” Id. In the Fourth Amendment excessive 

force context, “specificity is especially important,” Mullenix 

v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015), and “thus police officers 

are entitled to qualified immunity unless existing precedent 

squarely governs the specific facts at issue,” Kisela, 138 S. 

Ct. at 1153 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

We consider two questions in determining whether an 

officer is entitled to qualified immunity: (1) whether the 

facts “taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting 

the injury show that the officers’ conduct violated a 

constitutional right” and (2) whether “the right was clearly 

established at the time of the alleged violation.” Thompson 
6 VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE

v. Rahr, 885 F.3d 582, 586 (9th Cir. 2018) (internal 

quotation marks and brackets omitted) (quoting Saucier v. 

Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)). We may consider the two 

questions in any order. Id. We consider only the second 

question here.

The undisputed facts establish that (1) Officer Rutledge 

was responding to a violent domestic disturbance where 

Andrade had called 911 to report that Omar had hit her and 

Omar’s mother and had smashed the window of Andrade’s 

car; (2) Omar was approaching Andrade with a knife drawn; 

(3) Omar continued his advance while ignoring multiple 

commands from Officer Rutledge to stop and a warning that 

Officer Rutledge would shoot; and (4) Omar had advanced 

to within 10–15 feet of Andrade when Officer Rutledge 

fired.

The Supreme Court in Kisela considered a similar 

situation. It concluded that, as of 2010, it was not clearly 

established in the Ninth Circuit that the use of deadly force 

was unconstitutional where the decedent “was armed with a 

large knife,” had advanced “within striking distance” of 

another individual, and was ignoring the officer’s orders to 

drop the knife. Kisela, 138 S. Ct. at 1154. The Supreme 

Court also found that even though the decedent appeared 

calm and the other woman present did not feel endangered, 

the shooting officer did not violate clearly established law 

and was therefore entitled to qualified immunity. Id. at 1151, 

1154.

Omar posed at least as much of a threat as the decedent 

in Kisela. Officer Rutledge was responding to a violent 

domestic dispute rather than the simple “check welfare” call 

in Kisela. Id. at 1155 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). Omar had 

reportedly just assaulted Andrade and his own mother and 

had smashed the window of Andrade’s car. He ignored 
VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE 7

Officer Rutledge’s repeated orders to stop and continued to 

advance toward Andrade with a knife. Kisela shows that, as 

of 2010, there was no clearly established law demonstrating 

that Officer Rutledge’s use of deadly force was 

unconstitutional.

We also find that no intervening case gave Officer 

Rutledge notice that her actions would violate clearly 

established law—the cases Ventura cites are distinguishable 

in material ways. In Glenn v. Washington County, 673 F.3d 

864 (9th Cir. 2011), the decedent had not previously 

attempted to hurt anyone and had not moved toward anyone 

else until after he was shot with a beanbag gun. Id. at 874, 

878–79. In George v. Morris, 736 F.3d 829 (9th Cir. 2013), 

while the officers were responding to a domestic disturbance 

call, decedent’s wife had not been previously assaulted, was 

not near the decedent, and there was a question of material 

fact as to whether the decedent, who was using a walker, had 

raised his gun toward the responding officers. Id. at 832–33, 

839. Finally, the opinion in Estate of Lopez v. Gelhaus, 

871 F.3d 998 (9th Cir. 2017), not only postdates the incident 

here by two years, it also does not squarely govern the facts 

before us. In Gelhaus, an officer shot a teenager who was 

walking with a toy gun that looked like an AK-47. Id. 

at 1002–03. The teenager was suspected of no crime and was 

shot when he turned in response to a single order to drop his 

gun that came from behind. Id. at 1020–21.

The degrees of apparent danger in these cases do not 

“squarely govern” the facts here. Omar was advancing with 

a knife toward a woman whom he had reportedly just 

assaulted. He ignored Officer Rutledge’s repeated 

commands to stop and a warning that she would shoot. None 

of the cases Ventura cites involved an officer acting under 

similar circumstances as Officer Rutledge, and therefore, 
8 VENTURA V. RUTLEDGE

Ventura fails to show that it was clearly established that 

Officer Rutledge’s actions amounted to constitutionally 

excessive force. See Shafer v. Cnty. of Santa Barbara, 868 

F.3d 1110, 1118 (9th Cir. 2017) (holding officer was entitled 

to qualified immunity because plaintiff “fail[ed] to identify 

sufficiently specific constitutional precedents to alert [the 

officer] that his particular conduct was unlawful”).

Officer Rutledge is entitled to qualified immunity.1

AFFIRMED.

1 Ventura argues that there is a question of material fact as to 

whether Omar was “walking normally,” whether he appeared to be

brandishing his knife, and whether Andrade felt threatened. Resolution 

of these facts does not change our finding that Officer Rutledge did not 

violate clearly established law. It was not clearly established, in 2015, 

that fatally shooting a person, who was armed with a knife and advancing 

toward someone whom he had reportedly just assaulted, and who ignored 

multiple commands to stop and a warning that the officer would fire, 

constituted constitutionally excessive force, even if the decedent was 

“walking normally,” did not appear to be “brandishing” his knife, and 

the intended victim did not feel threatened.