Once a rising Hollywood actress, Vanessa Marquez was silenced forever during a wellness check. A chaotic SWAT-like scene led by police inside her South Pasadena home took down the ill 90-pound, bed-ridden 49-year-old. She wrestled to survive, pleaded to be left alone, and then it happened.
As her apartment complex was surrounded by a stream of police, Marquez’s back was eventually sprayed with bullets on Aug. 30, 2018. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Now, five years after Marquez’s death, UC Irvine law students, filmmakers and friends are emerging with a renewed rally cry that introduces the documentary, “Ninety Minutes Later.” They look back at her milestones as an actress on shows such as “ER” starring George Clooney but ultimately seek to tell the full story of the day she was fatally wounded. Obtaining the critical police body cam footage alone was a major hurdle.
“What the police released publicly was a fraction of what they had,” said filmmaker Cyndy Fujikawa, who recently screened the film at the OC Film Fiesta in Santa Ana. “We had to go back and make more requests for footage.”
At the center of “Ninety Minutes Later” is a profound look at the missteps of a wellness call, the still missing police body cam footage and the UC Irvine law students who attended a public meeting with city officials in South Pasadena to demand the release of critical evidence.
The film unfolds as police reach Marquez’s South Pasadena apartment, a scenario that builds more intense with each scene as the documentary goes back-and-forth between the body cam videos and the story of Marquez’s life, career, triumphs, and struggles beset by mental illness, among other health concerns.
Dramatic video of the fatal shooting shows the minute-by-minute decisions by police as they initiate the wellness call and grapple with shooting Marquez after she suddenly reveals a BB gun.
“Everything that would’ve ended up in a trial, people that would’ve spoken to the process, what’s supposed to have happened in these calls, how it should’ve been handled, we ended up talking to them instead,” said Fujikawa. “So this is justice.”
The film blends interviews, photos, performance clips, and candid conversations about Marquez’s earlier days before her spiraling mental health issues some tried to support, but few could. She was a vibrant person, someone who gravitated towards a career in the arts early in life. Her “Stand and Deliver” co-stars saw Marquez as the “youngest” sister in a family of actors who became fast friends when they met.
According to police reports, the officers involved believed they were acting in self-defense when Marquez was seen with what they deemed a gun. In 2019, UCI Law students in the Civil Rights Litigation Clinic requested that the South Pasadena police release evidence.
They requested “any and all documents related to the shooting be released, including any video and audio evidence (including body cam footage), investigative reports and findings, autopsy findings, etc.,” according to a UCI Law press release.
UCI Law students also showed up to a city council meeting in Pasadena and pushed for the release of the incident’s footage. Law student Mackenzie Anderson, as seen in the documentary, addresses officials about releasing those records to the public
Fujikawa said it was vital to have the support of UCI Law students involved in securing much of the footage, a process that is still ongoing as some of the body cam video is still missing, even as city officials have already settled the case with Marquez’s mother, Delia McElfresh. A federal judge approved a $450,000 settlement in a wrongful death suit filed by McElfresh in early 2021, according to published reports.
Daniel Villarreal, a producer on “Ninety Minutes Later,” was lifelong friends with Marquez. They met on the set of “Stand and Deliver,” a film about calculus teacher Jaime Escalante in the late ‘80s. The two, along with others in the cast, bonded through the Warner Bros. film that earned Edward James Olmos an Academy Award nomination for best actor in 1988 for his portrayal of the calculus teacher.
Villarreal has vowed to keep advocating for Marquez. Even in times when Marquez struggled, burned bridges, and isolated herself from friends and family, he tried to maintain contact and check in whenever possible.
“When Vanessa died it had been 30 years since the movie ‘Stand and Deliver’ had come out,” Villarreal recalls. “The cast stayed pretty close. We were like a little family.”
Villarreal remembers the summer day when news broke about Marquez shooting and while he was shocked, he said, it wasn’t unexpected either.
“They [South Pasadena police] basically blamed her for what happened, and they exonerated themselves by saying that she was the reason why all of this went down,” Villarreal said. “Illness is not a crime.”
At Orange County’s October screening in Santa Ana, some audience members expressed their thoughts about the film and Marquez’s story as part of a Q&A with the filmmakers. The subject of police brutality, people of color, and mental illness emerged in a spirited talk about community, finding solutions, and moving forward.
Victor Payan, the founding director of Media Arts Santa Ana, emphasized the importance of films such as “Ninety Minutes Later.”
“This is a powerful documentary that everybody needs to see,” Payan said. “It touches on an issue that impacts every community in the country.”
Jovanna Meave, a student at Chapman University who was featured in the documentary, also attended the Santa Ana premiere.
The documentary “invoked a lot of fear in me,” Meave revealed. “I couldn’t help but to think that it might be me or any other Latina actresses or actors that I know—anyone in my community.”
“Ninety Minutes Later,” which recently won Best Domestic Feature at The Pembroke Taparelli Arts Festival in Los Angeles, continues screening at festivals across the U.S.
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