Video clips have been released of a deputy shooting a seemingly suicidal 77-year-old man who appears to be holding the butt end of a pistol with two fingers outside a Vista church.
The septuagenarian, whose name has not been released and was walking with the aid of a cane, was slowly walking toward a parking lot in front of Iglesia Ni Cristo Church of Christ in the 1400 block of Calle Jules when Deputy Justin Williams shot him on the afternoon of May 7, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department.
The man remained hospitalized this week for treatment of gunshot wounds to his legs. He is expected to survive. The county District Attorney's Office has said it does not plan to file criminal charges against him over the encounter, sheriff's officials said.
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Williams' uniform-worn camera, a video surveillance system and a witness' cell phone captured images of the shooting and the events that immediately preceded it.
Deputies went to the church just north of East Bobier Drive about 12:30 p.m. in response to a 911 caller's report that a man was in a building there, holding a handgun to his head. When deputies arrived, they learned that members of the congregation were inside the complex with the armed man, though he was in a separate structure,
As the patrol personnel were trying to get more information about the situation, the elderly man walked outside into a breezeway with a cane in one hand and the pistol in the other, authorities said. The man's grandson preceded him down the breezeway. A deputy can be heard ordering the grandson to approach him, which he does.
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Despite deputies' repeated commands — and requests from his grandson — to drop the gun, the man kept walking slowly in their direction, holding the weapon loosely at arm's length — seemingly clutching it by the end of the handgrip, not in a position that would allow him to readily fire it.
Law enforcement repeatedly ordered the man to drop the firearm, to no avail. As the deputies backed up and continued shouting at him to disarm himself, he walked into the parking lot, where some bystanders stood at a distance, watching the confrontation.
"I don't want to have to shoot you!" a deputy is heard shouting in body-worn-camera footage. "Please drop the gun! Please!"
In response, the armed man yells back, "Shoot," several times. A moment later, the deputy fires a single round, prompting the suspect to drop the gun and collapse onto the pavement. It does not appear from the video that the man made any attempt to adjust his grip on the butt of the pistol. At one point prior to the shooting, daylight can be seen through the trigger guard of the weapon.
It's not clear from the video why Williams decided at that moment to shoot the man; there does not appear to be any precipitating event.
As he is on the ground, the shooting victim asks the deputies, "Why not in the head?"
Sheriff's personnel rendered first aid, including the application of tourniquets, on the man prior to the arrival of paramedics.
Perspective on the Shooting From a Former Law-Enforcement Official
NBC 7 reached out to Cameron Gary, a retired supervising investigator with the San Diego District Attorney's office, about the shooting.
"So, the gentleman walks out, and he’s holding the gun up in the air in a way that’s, you know, questionable, because it's weird," Gary said. "You know, like, who holds a gun like that?"
Gary said that, based on the video and its resolution, it did not appear like the man was pointing the gun. Regardless, Gary said, that did not mean there wasn't a threat from the weapon.
Gary, who has decades of law-enforcement experience and has trained others on how to properly use firearms, demonstrated why that was the case using a rubber training gun.
"If a person holds a gun like this, by the muzzle, it's still a weapon, and we don't know if it's loaded, but we assume it is," Gary said. "But it's going to be very difficult — they have to use two hands, try to throw it around or try to flip it or something like that to get it in the position to try to engage somebody."
Gary said that, in his opinion, Williams went above and beyond what was expected of him.
"It's a deadly-force scenario, frankly," Gary said. "It is because there's a knife — or in this case a gun — there and he’s moving toward other people."
San Diego police are investigating the shooting under a protocol put in place last year in which different law-enforcement agencies conduct independent investigations of shootings by each other's agencies.
As is common protocol in cases of law enforcement shootings, Williams, who has been employed by the sheriff's department for about 2.5 years, will work a desk job if he is cleared for a return to full field duty, officials said.
NBC 7's Dana Williams and the City News Service contributed to this report — Ed.
