The original lead image in this article incorrectly identified a different Harbor Police officer as Officer Patrick Lynch. We regret the error — Ed.
A little over a week after gunfire killed people in two locations in Little Italy, San Diego police have identified the officer who was shot by a homicidal gunman who was himself fatally shot at by two fellow Harbor Police officers, whose names were also released Thursday.
Officer Patrick Lynch was shot in the hip on Nov. 13 a little after 9 a.m. by Christopher Kyle Farrell. Lynch, whose recovery is "progressing in the right direction," according to his department chief, did not return fire in the shootout near the intersection of Juniper Street and Kettner Boulevard, but Corporal Jason Day and Officer Alexander Kahn both did fire at Farrell, who was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Little Italy Killings
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Lynch has been with the Harbor Police just since September and is in field patrol, according to a news release issued Thursday by the San Diego Police Department, where Lynch had worked for about a year before moving to the other department.
"We are happy to report he is home with his family to continue his recovery," Harbor Police chief Magda Ferndandez said, in part, in a separate news release sent out Thursday.
Day is a six-year veteran of the Harbor Police, while his fellow officer Kahn has been with that department for nine years, according to SDPD. Both of them are field training officers.
The violence downtown last Wednesday began at about 8:20 a.m. near 4th Avenue and Ash Street, when Farrell, 26, approached a car and opened fire on a married couple, Jose Medina, 41, and Rachael Martinez, 32, killing them both.
Martinez, who had been involved romantically with Farrell prior to the shooting, filed a police report against him in October in which she accused him of domestic violence, including false imprisonment and sex crimes, all information police confirmed in a news release issued the day after the killings. Farrell was later arrested based on those accusations and his work firearm — he had been employed with Inter-Con Security, which provides contract security guards for the MTS — was terminated. Farrell also owned a personal firearm, which he used in the killings.
After Farrell killed the pair, he reloaded his semi-automatic handgun and fled the scene north on foot instead of getting in his vehicle, which was later located near 4th Avenue and Ash Street and impounded.
After the shootout that morning about a mile north, investigators said, they found Farrell's gun behind the electrical box where he was fatally hit by gunfire, as well "multiple folding knives, a knife sheath on the belt of his pants, a holster, a black tactical flashlight, three magazines clipped to his pants pocket, and an empty magazine on the ground."
Anyone with information about the case is being urged to call San Diego police at (619) 531-2293. Tips can also be called in anonymously to Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.
