San Diego Police Shoot Auto-Theft Suspect Following Pursuit, Car Crash

SAN DIEGO, CA — An auto theft suspect was wounded Thursday when a San Diego Police Department officer opened fire on him when he appeared to reach for what looked like a pistol following a chase that ended in a crash.

The pursuit from the Lincoln Park district of San Diego to the La Presa community roughly five miles to the east began shortly after 12:45 p.m. Thursday, when patrol personnel tried to pull over the suspect in the vicinity of Euclid and Imperial avenues, SDPD Lt. Cesar Jimenez said.

The driver of the stolen vehicle refused to yield and fled to the east, at one point running over a tire-flattening spike strip police laid in his path and eventually leading officers to a neighborhood in an unincorporated area north of Sweetwater Reservoir and just east of state Route 125.

There, the fleeing suspect lost control of the stolen car, sending it crashing off the roadway at Gillespie Drive and Jamacha Road at about 1:30 p.m., Officer Colin Steinbroner said. The out-of-control vehicle struck a light pole, which then fell onto an SDPD cruiser, the spokesman said.

At that point, officers had the suspect get out of the car and turn his back to them with his hands in the air, and then ordered him to lie down face first in the street.

In video footage captured by an officer's uniform-worn camera and released by the SDPD early Thursday evening, the suspect can be seen getting onto his knees. Another officer can be heard asking, "Is that a real gun?," apparently referring to an object on the roadway near the suspect.

Moments later, the suspect leaned toward the object with his right hand extended toward it, and the officer whose body camera was recording the video fired two rounds at him, sending the suspect collapsing onto the asphalt.

Paramedics took the suspect to a trauma center for treatment of gunshot injuries of undetermined severity.

Along with the video footage, police released a still image of what they identified as the object that the suspect seemed to be reaching for -- described with seeming accuracy in an accompanying news release as "an item that appeared to be a firearm."

An officer was treated at the scene of the shooting for cuts suffered when the toppling utility standard broke a window on the patrol vehicle it landed on, Steinbroner said.

— City News Service