Man allegedly fired deputy’s gun
Yuba County Sheriff’s Office: Transient killed in Linda unholstered firearm during struggle
Just two years after becoming Sutter County’s top administrator, Scott Mitnick is resigning. Mitnick is leaving public service after 30 years to join the private sector for a better work-family balance, Mitnick said in an office interview Wednesday. ...
The Yuba County Sheriff’s Office alleges that the man killed by a deputy in Linda on Monday had unholstered and fired another deputy’s gun. New details were included in a news release issued Wednesday.
Deputies responded to a report of an assault in progress in the 1400 block of North Beale Road. A man in his 70s had been beaten and his cane stolen by Jahmal D. Stewart, 45, a homeless Marysville native.
The first deputy to arrive made verbal contact with Stewart as he was walking west toward Avondale Avenue, according to a department press release. The deputy asked Stewart to remove his hand from his coat pocket and that, for officer safety, he was going to pat Stewart down for weapons. Stewart then began to pull away and tried to flee.
The deputy attempted to place a control hold on Stewart when he allegedly became violent and grabbed the deputy’s holstered gun. The deputy took Stewart to the ground in an attempt to gain control but Stewart, “who was much bigger in physical stature than the deputy,” according to the release, continued to try to remove the gun.
As a backup deputy approached, they heard the first deputy call out that Stewart had the gun. Both deputies reported that they heard one shot fired from the weapon that the suspect had been trying to unholster; the backup deputy then fired between three and five shots from a few feet away, according to the release. Investigators interviewed several witnesses who also reported seeing the struggle
between the original deputy and Stewart. They corroborated that he had been trying to get the gun.
“Due to the type of holsters carried by our deputies, a duty weapon will not fire when fully holstered,” according to the release, “leading us to believe that the suspect had successfully taken the weapon far enough out of the holster for the duty weapon to fire.”
Stewart had an active arrest warrant out of Sacramento and was on probation for various weapons violations, according to the release. He had a long