FREMONT — A man killed by Fremont police Thursday night during an exchange of gunshots near a gas station had fled from an officer who tried to stop him for a probation violation earlier this week, a police spokeswoman said.
Undercover and uniformed officers shot at the man after he pointed a gun at them near the ARCO station at the intersection of Fremont Boulevard and Nicolet Avenue, according to police. Authorities have not yet identified the man.
Undercover officers spotted him around 6:47 p.m. as a passenger in a vehicle on Fremont Boulevard near Central Avenue, Fremont police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said. Several marked patrol cars were then called to the area.
The car stopped at the intersection, and police said when the man ran away they chased him. Police reported the man pointed a gun at one of the uniformed officers, so they fired at him, Bosques said. She said seven officers — three undercover and four patrol — fired their weapons.
Bosques said police believe the suspect fired at the officers at some point during the exchange; they located a revolver with three spent shell casings next to his body. The number of shots fired and by whom is still under investigation, she added.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “He had a gun, he pointed it at our officers.”
Undercover officers were assigned to find the man after he reportedly sped away from a school resource officer who knew he had a probation warrant and tried to stop a car he was in. Bosque didn’t say what day that occurred or whether the man was a driver or passenger.
That officer did not pursue the car, Bosques said.
“That’s what sort of triggered up our undercover team, saying ‘He ran from us, we know he’s got an active warrant, let’s go look for him today,’ ” she said Thursday night.
When officers tried to pull over the vehicle in which the man was riding Thursday, he got out on the passenger side and tried to flee, Bosques said.
Officers followed him behind an ARCO gas station at the intersection, where they said he pulled a gun on them before they opened fire.
An eyewitness said he heard officers yell “drop it” to the man, then heard gunfire.
He ran back toward the intersection and was shot again, falling to the ground.
“We have this guy, he ran from another officer this week, he’s known to have weapons,” Bosques said. “And so these are the types of people that we’re looking for to find and take off the street.”
Bosques said there was an active probation warrant on the man for removing a court-issued ankle monitor stemming from a crime she couldn’t specify. The man also missed a scheduled court appearance Thursday for a felony weapons possession charge from a neighboring city.
Bosques added Friday that police “have a lot of video that shows the incident,” some recorded from cameras that officers wore, some from police car-mounted video cameras and some from the gas station’s video cameras.
She could not say how many of the officers involved in the shooting wore body cameras Thursday night.
This marks Fremont police’s second officer-involved shooting this year. Last month, police shot an auto burglary suspect in San Leandro who they said confronted officers with a gun.
Fremont officers also were involved in four shootings between February and May of 2017. Three people died in those shootings, although authorities said in one of them a man perished from a self-inflicted wound after exchanging gunfire with police.
On March 14, 2017, task force officers fired AR-15 rifle rounds into a moving car they said was trying to run them over, killing a 16-year-old pregnant girl from Antioch. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office cleared the officers of any wrongdoing in that shooting, a little more than three months after District Attorney Nancy O’Malley received a $10,000 donation from the Fremont police union.
A Fremont officer fatally shot a man three times in close range on Feb. 5, 2017. According to police, the man repeatedly punched the officer. That officer was also cleared by the District Attorney’s Office.
On April 9, 2017, police said Fremont officers chased a man reported to have a gun behind a Walgreens store on Decoto Road, then fired on him after they say he shot at them first. The coroner’s office conducted an autopsy and found the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The city of Fremont and the officers are facing federal lawsuits stemming from the February and March 2017 shootings.