By Rosalio Ahumada
Source The Sacramento Bee
Two SWAT team members fatally shot a man who reportedly threatened violence and came out of a south Sacramento home holding his girlfriend and a shotgun.
The deadly shooting occurred just outside the home in the 3900 block of 41st Street, just south of 14th Avenue in an unincorporated neighborhood of Sacramento County.
The incident began about 10:10 a.m. as a reported domestic violence incident. Inside the home was the suspect, his girlfriend, his adult daughter, his daughter’s boyfriend and his 3-year-old granddaughter.
The caller, the suspect’s daughter, told dispatchers that they had overheard an argument between her father and her father’s girlfriend, said Sgt. Kionna Rowe, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
The caller told dispatchers that her father had come downstairs and brandished some type of weapon, and he had threatened them in some manner. Rowe said the suspect’s daughter feared for her safety, so she left the home with her boyfriend and her daughter.
Moments later deputies arrived at the home and spoke with the suspect’s daughter, gathering more information about what had unfolded as they developed a plan to surround the home, Rowe said. Authorities established this was a hostage situation.
The sheriff’s SWAT team and hostage negotiators arrived at the home and started communicating with the suspect who was still inside with his girlfriend. Rowe said negotiators first began speaking to the suspect via a loudspeaker before speaking to him on the phone.
“They had him on the line, and he was making statements that he was going to shoot, he wanted to shoot a cop,” Rowe told news reporters.
The suspect spoke to negotiators about some unknown male, asking for him to come back into the house. Rowe said the suspect threatened to “come out shooting,” if the unknown male didn’t return within five minutes. She said the suspect shortly after threatened that deadline to three minutes.
About 10 minutes later, the suspect “unexpectedly” opened the home’s front door and appeared holding his girlfriend and the shotgun, Rowe said. At that point, the SWAT team had already surrounded the home.
Rowe said two deputies, who have worked for the Sheriff’s Office for seven years and are assigned to the SWAT team, fired their guns, shooting the suspect. She said nothing was said between the suspect and the deputies in the moments before the shots were fired.
Deputies then moved in, grabbed the girlfriend and pulled her to a safe area. The girlfriend was not struck by gunfire.
Deputies also moved to try to administer immediate medical care to the wounded suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Rowe said the suspect did not fire the shotgun during the confrontation with the SWAT team, and she did not know how many shots the deputies fired.
About 90 minutes passed from the first call reporting the domestic violence incident to when the deputies shot the suspect. There was a lot of commotion heard as negotiators spoke to the suspect on the phone. Rowe said the negotiators could hear the suspect’s girlfriend screaming in the background, and it was tough at times to make sense of what the suspect and his girlfriend were saying.
“It’s a very volatile, dynamic situation,” Rowe said. “We come in, hoping to defuse and de-escalate. And unfortunately sometimes it can’t happen.”
Tuesday’s deadly shooting just east of the South Oak Park neighborhood occurred less than a month after a deputy fatally shot a man wielding a machete who reportedly advanced on his wife and the deputy. Jaime Naranjo Bautista’s family has said the man was suffering in a deep mental health crisis when he was killed.
Rowe said she didn’t have any information to indicate the suspect shot by deputies was suffering with any type of mental illness, but investigators were still gathering information.
The sheriff’s spokeswoman said situations involving an armed suspect are never “cookie-cutter” incidents with law enforcement responses that fit all situations. She said the Sheriff’s Office tries to use time as an advantage, continuing to communicate with the armed suspect as they try resolve the incident peacefully.
Earlier this week, the Sheriff’s Office took a Bay Area man into custody after he reportedly led Citrus Heights police in vehicle chase, crashed into a tree and broke into an occupied Fair Oaks home with a gun. An elderly woman injured herself after she jumped through an opened second-story window to escape to safety.
But Tuesday’s shooting, Rowe said, unfolded rapidly from the time the suspect made threats about coming out shooting to when he appeared at the front door.
“You never know if he’s going to shoot at officers, if he’s going to shoot the hostage,” Rowe said. “In any of these situations, we’re constantly balancing the public’s safety with threat assessment with that particular subject.”
The Sheriff’s Office was in the early stages of a long investigation, Rowe said. Authorities had closed 14th Avenue, between 40th and 42nd streets. Investigators were expected to remain in the area for several hours.
Rowe said the Sheriff’s Office will likely release bodycam video of the incident within 30 days. SWAT team members, like other deputies, wear body cameras on their uniforms.
The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office will release the name of the man shot by deputies. His name was not available Tuesday afternoon.
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