A 24-year-old man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of Mickey Cooper, the younger brother of former Los Angeles Lakers player Michael Cooper. Mickey, 64, was shot in the pre-dawn hours of 18 November at Washington park in Pasadena, California, according to a Pasadena police department press release. Two days later, police arrested Aaron Miguel and booked him for assault with a firearm in an unrelated incident; as police investigated they say they found evidence tying the 24-year-old to Cooper’s slaying and amended his charges to include murder.
Cooper’s death comes after two other shootings in north-west Pasadena, a majority Black and Latino area that has long borne the brunt of Pasadena’s gun violence burden. On 29 October, a man was shot and critically injured at Washington park and less than a week earlier on 23 October, 26-year-old Cecilio Hernandez Ramirez Jr was shot and killed a five-minute drive away from the park where Cooper lost his life.
