SAN DIEGO —
The District Attorney’s Office on Friday said it has cleared police officers involved in five unrelated shootings in San Diego County over the last year, four of which were fatal.
Prosecutors found that officers had acted reasonably in the five shootings, which date back to July 2020. Guns — or objects that officers thought looked like guns — played a role in four of them. The fifth person was carrying a metal bar when he charged police.
The District Attorney’s Office said all five incidents share a common factor: Each suspect had methamphetamine in his system.
On July 5, 2020, San Diego police shot and wounded a 25-year-old man who’d slipped out of his handcuffs in the sally port at the Police Department’s downtown headquarters, grabbed a gun and fired a shot. Four days later, San Diego police shot and killed a 49-year-old man after a brief standoff in City Heights when he picked up what appeared to be a handgun and pointed it at them.