SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Authorities Wednesday released video footage of last month's fatal police shooting of a firearm-assault suspect following a road chase that began in San Ysidro and ended when the fleeing man crashed his truck in a neighborhood near Balboa Park.
Two members of a San Diego Police Department SWAT team opened fire on 37-year-old Enrique Cortez Jr. in the 800 block of 26th Street in Golden Hill shortly before 4 p.m. April 14, their uniform-worn cameras activated as they unleashed several fusillades of bullets into his disabled vehicle.
Cortez died at the scene.
The events that led to the deadly gunfire began about a half-hour earlier, when a 911 caller reported seeing a man, later identified as Cortez, "being kind of erratic" and carrying a tire with a rifle stashed inside it on Blanche Street, west of Interstate 805 and just north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
WARNING: This body camera footage is not suitable for all viewers.
As the witness reported what he was seeing, the dispatcher he was talking to could hear Cortez yelling in the background, according to police. The caller went on to describe the suspect raising the rifle in the direction of a passing vehicle, then confronting a bicyclist, arguing with him, pointing a pistol at him and firing a round into the ground. A surveillance camera captured images of the encounter.
Patrol personnel arrived in the neighborhood a short time later, spotted Cortez and ordered him, their guns drawn, to drop his weapon. Instead, he walked to a parked white Ford F-150, got behind the wheel and drove off to the east.
At nearby Cypress Street, the suspect allegedly fired four shots into the air from inside the pickup, then continued fleeing toward San Ysidro Boulevard.
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With officers giving chase in numerous squad cars and aboard a patrol helicopter, Cortez fled to the north on Interstate 5, speeding and occasionally swerving back and forth across the freeway.
At times the suspect waved his arms out of the driver's side window of the truck, and he nearly caused several collisions while traveling through Chula Vista and National City, police said. A camera in the police helicopter recorded video of the pursuit.
Reaching the outskirts of downtown San Diego, the suspect abruptly pulled to a halt in the middle of the freeway, his truck facing sideways across several lanes. He remained there for about a minute, waving and gesticulating with his hands toward officers' stationary cruisers before accelerating to the north once again.
Just east of SDPD headquarters, the suspect exited onto Pershing Drive, then drove past the southern edge of Balboa Park Golf Course, passed through Golden Hill Park and continued fleeing to the south and east.
Finally, reaching a cul-de-sac just north of state Route 94 and south of E Street, Cortez made a failed attempt to turn around and double back. Instead, he sent his truck colliding into the front of an oncoming squad car and crashing to a halt into the front of a nearby house.
At that point, an officer pulled up behind Cortez's truck, boxing him in, and police surrounded the vehicle, their service guns trained on its driver's seat.
The suspect then tried in vain to back away from the damaged home, revving the engine of the truck and causing its tires to spin uselessly, kicking up clouds of gray-white smoke.
Moments later, SDPD Sgts. Richard Curtis and Bryan Shields opened fire on Cortez with a rifle and a handgun, respectively, discharging a total of about 15 rounds.
Officers then cautiously advanced on the pickup, pulled the mortally wounded suspect out and tried in vain to revive him with CPR.
Investigators found a rifle and a handgun in the bullet-riddled truck, according to police.
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