LAKE FOREST, Calif.—Multiple Orange County Sheriff Deputies are on mandatory leave Feb. 11, after shooting and killing a man Feb. 10 after he, officials say, charged at them with a knife, after a three-hour standoff in a residential neighborhood.
“[We] really worked very, very hard to bring yesterday’s incident to a peaceful resolve,” Sheriff spokesperson Carrie Braun said. “No one wants a situation like that to come to that end.”
This is the second deputy-involved shooting in Lake Forest, a city in Orange County of about 88,000, since the beginning of the year, and the first fatality.
It all started when deputies responded to a traffic collision where a dark-colored truck hit several parked vehicles in a residential neighborhood just before midnight Feb. 9, according to officials.
When deputies arrived, they encountered a man with a knife locked inside a truck, which he refused to exit.
Deputies evacuated residences surrounding the confrontation, Braun said, and called in a crisis intervention team that tried to coax the man out of his vehicle for nearly three hours.
At approximately 2:45 a.m. the man, officials say, exited his truck and charged at them with a knife, prompting several deputies to shoot “multiple times,” according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.
Orange County paramedics transported the man to a nearby hospital where he underwent surgery and later died.
No further details were provided. The name of the deceased has not been released.
An investigation into the matter is currently underway by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Footage from body-worn cameras of the deputies is expected to be released per state law, according to the sheriff’s department.
Standard protocol immediately places deputies involved in a shooting on leave for three working days.
