Police: 3 officers injured as Colton man rams patrol car, resists arrest

Three Rialto police officers were injured after a man drove his car into a patrol car helping out with a previous wreck and then sparred with additional arresting officers, police said Thursday.

The incident unfolded on Wednesday after officers responded to a car that struck a telephone in the 3300 block of North Riverside Avenue driven by a mother with her two children, the Rialto Police Department said in a news release. At 12:08 p.m., the officers were inside their patrol car completing paperwork when their driver-side door was struck by another car, causing the airbags to deploy and trapping the officers inside, police said.

The driver, identified as 23-year-old David Lawrence Cordova III of Colton, was driving a black Nissan Sentra north on Riverside Avenue when he struck the officers’ car, which was facing north with its emergency lights activated, authorities said. Witnesses at the scene said Cordova appeared to “deliberately swerve” at and “ram” the officers’ car, according to police.

Cordova then got out of his car and “acted erratically,” the Police Department said. Responding officers found Cordova in the middle of the street, yelling incoherently and showing signs of being under the influence of narcotics, police said.

He resisted officers, but the officers were able to take

Cordova into custody. One officer sustained minor injuries during the struggle with Cordova, officials said.

The officers trapped inside of their car were stuck inside for “several minutes” before being freed, police said. The two officers and the officer with minor injuries were taken to a local hospital before being released later in the evening to recover at home, the Police Department said.

Cordova also was taken to the hospital with minor injuries from the crash, police said.

It later was learned that Cordova was suspected of a carjacking just several minutes earlier in the 500 block of Mount Vernon Avenue in San Bernardino at a medical clinic, officials said.

The victim, who suffered from a medical condition, was attacked while she was in her driver’s seat when Cordova opened her door and then struck her in the head with her own cane and then pulled her out of the car by her hair, authorities said.

Cordova was booked on suspicion of attempted murder and resisting an executive officer by force, police said. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail, police said.

The carjacking was being investigated by the San Bernardino Police Department, and further charges were expected from their agency, Rialto police said.

The Rialto Police Department asks anyone with information related to the investigation to contact Sgt. Dan Smith at 909-820-2515.