Madera Police Department officers responded to a call about an adult male who was acting erratically and destroying property in the 1400 block of East Kennedy Street.
Unfortunately, the call, Sunday at about noon, led the shooting death of the suspect after he was believed to be brandishing a firearm at officers.
“The reporting party said she allowed the person to stay at her house for a couple of days,” Madera Chief of Police, Gino Chiaramonte, said. “He locked himself in the restroom and was making weird noises. He had been acting strange for a few days. When the officers got there, the reporting party mentioned a possible gun. We decided to disengage, and not push forward and cause any action.”
The suspect was breaking items in the house, and also started to flood the house from the bathroom.
MPD officers cleared the house, and removed the family who was at the house out of harm’s way.
“Sometimes leaving people alone and giving them their space, they will calm down. We don’t want to engage them, and make them more mad and create an unsafe environment,” Chiaramonte said.
However, members of the family returned to the scene to try to talk the suspect out of the bathroom, and the suspect went to the garage area brandishing what looked to be a firearm.
Officers tried to talk the suspect into lowering his weapon, but he kept pointing it at officers. Fearing for their safety, officers shot the suspect, and after immediate medical aid, the suspect died. Officers were behind barricade from about 25 yards out and none of the MPD officers were injured.
“We don’t know if he was having a mental health crisis or substance abuse present. Sometimes, it’s co-occurring. It creates problems,” Chiaramonte said. “This is what our law enforcement is faced with daily. Does the person on the other side, in the moment, have access to a weapon, and are they presenting that to the officers? When they do, it can result in officer-involved shooting or deadly force. I don’t ask the officers to sit and wait when they are presented with a gun in front of them to decide if the gun is fake or real. That’s the real-life decision, in the moment, they have to make. The officers believed it to be real, and utilized deadly force.”
Chiaramonte said that the gun may be an airsoft pistol, but it looked real.
“If I was to show any member of the public, from any distance, they would not know that gun wasn’t real or fake. I looked at the gun, and thought it was real,” he said.
Chiaramonte also said that he believes that family did not do anything to incite the incident. However, the suspect was staying in a room at the home, and paying rent.
“The family thought he was high on drugs. For us, mental health crisis are real, or it could be a combination of both,” he said. “This happens often in our community. With inflation and the cost of housing, we have multiple families or have a family trying to make payments, and need some help. They move someone in they truly don’t know. We see this often. There were young teen individuals in the house that witnessed this incident. That’s who it affects most.”
Madera County Sheriff’s Office was called in to handle the property/crime damage done to the property. MPD will conduct its own administrative review of the situation. The officer-involved shooting investigation will be conducted by the Department of Justice, who will provide a third party fact finding to the situation.