[citation needed] Lyga, assigned to the Narcotics Division Clandestine Lab Squad at the time, along other members of his team was staking out a suspected methamphetamine dealer.

Lyga was the point man, which required him to sit in an unmarked 1991 Buick Regal waiting for a drug deal to happen, so that he could follow the suspects back to their source and make the necessary arrests.

Lyga fired two shots at Gaines; the first missed, but the second hit the driver just below his right armpit, puncturing his heart before stopping in his lung.

When Lyga returned to the station and awaited instructions on the investigation of the shooting he was informed by his commander, Dennis Zuener, that Kevin Gaines was a Los Angeles Police Officer.

A group of African-Americans, led by Gaines's former partners Derwin Henderson and Bruce Stallworth, went to the scene of the incident and began conducting an unofficial investigation.

Cochran later filed a twenty-five-million-dollar claim against the city, charging that Lyga was "an aggressive and dangerous police officer" who had failed to summon immediate medical assistance for Gaines, contributing to his death, and that he had conspired to "hide and distort the true facts concerning the incident".

[1] Judge Schoettler later wrote a letter to Parks telling him that he thought the settlement was "political"; had the case gone to trial, he believed, Lyga and the city would have won.

On March 27, 1998, one pound (0.45 kg) of cocaine evidence booked from one of Lyga's previous arrests was found missing from the Parker Center property room.

[1] Investigators eventually learned that the missing cocaine had been stolen by Rafael Perez, whom they suspected, at the time, of targeting Lyga in retaliation for the shooting of Gaines.

On June 26, 2014, Detective Frank Lyga was placed on paid administrative leave after a pending investigation into allegations he made racist comments calling Attorney Carl Douglas an "Ewok from the Star Wars movies".

[9] Frank Lyga is played by Shea Whigham in the biography film City of Lies, which features the 1997 road rage incident with LAPD officer Kevin Gaines.