reporter: mcfarland is now suing the marin county sheriff s office. i think mr. mcfarland s got a whale of a case in terms of his claims against the police. this idea that somehow they needed to take him in for a psychiatric examination because he was a threat to himself is almost laughable. reporter: california s court of appeals sets strict guidelines that warn police tasers should only be used in threatening situations because it inflicts more pain than other so-called non-lethal weapons. in a statement the sheriff s office says, we are confident the actions of our deputies will within the law and department policy. mike von fremd, abc news, los angeles. a truly strange case there. i mean, he didn t seem, in the video at least, to be that much
police on a high speed chase with his dead girlfriend in the passenger s seat. he was wouldn t for a death of a man in hercules and the disappearance of that man s son and two murders in vallejo yesterday afternoon. we have team coverage with amy hollyfield live in hercules. we now know what may have started all this violence. a fight over a woman inside this house in hercules. 46-year-old cindy tran is mother to three sons and one of her songs tells abc news that her mother recently broke up with the accused killer. they believe he beat 73-year-old man to death because he thought the man or his son was romantically involved with the girlfriend. the son is missing. police are worried that he may be dead. now, the girlfriend, cindy was found dead inside a car that he had been driving. her colleagues in vltz said that he didn t deserve her. they had a really rocky relationship. he loved cindy so much. he always knew there was something about him but she loved him. she respe
he thought there was a romantic relationship between his girlfriend and one of the men. whether that is founded or not did not appear in the investigation. a house mate reported both men missing saturday. investigators found one of them, a 73-year-old in his bedroom bludgeoned to death. and police are losing hope his son is still alive. searchers spent the day scouring grassy areas behind this business park, hoping to find salas. the area is not far from a lab where employees say he once worked as a security guard. this is a discovery that led police to the parking lot, believed to be the same one he was seen drifrg before the crime. authorities say the registered owner is one of the women found dead in vallejo. this isn t someone you can describe as an 8:00 to 5:00 working life style person. he s someone with relationships with people and borrowed money and veiled himself in the use of the vehicles and things like that. authorities spotted him driving his girlfriend
hostages. police, fire, fbi and s.w.a.t. teams swarmed the scene. everybody start moving as far away from the building as you can. reporter: workers were told to evacuate or hide. in a text message to abc news, one wrote, i am in work closet with workers here. i am okay. in the day care center, babies in cribs were rolled across busy streets to safety at a nearby mcdonald s. then it ended with a detonation and a single shot. the suspect was shot by police officers. the device appeared to go off. the hostages, there were three hostages. all the hostages are safe. reporter: law enforcement sources identified the suspect as james j. lee, seen here in this video. he s believed to have created this website called save the planet protest, demanding that the discovery channel call for programs encouraging human sterilization and adding, the planet does not need humans. the gunman walked into the first floor lobby of that building with the blue sign behind me, flashing
landfall. earl is a category three storm right now with sustained winds of more than 111 miles an hour. the eye now less than 200 miles from cape hatteras, north carolina, and it s outer banks that could be the first to feel the effects of the hurricane before it takes an expected turn to the northeast. warnings and watches are up from north carolina, where at least 100,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the coast; all the way up to the canadian border. as this view from space demstraights, earl is a particularly large hurricane b400 miles across. we have a team of correspondents stationed along the east coast tonight. we begin with kelly cobiella who is in kill devil hills, north carolina. kelly. reporter: erica, good evening. the winds here are getting stronger, and the seas, as you can see, are really starting to build along this coastline. many of these beach towns are deserted, with a menacing storm expected to pass within 75 miles of this coastline, even some wh