Fatal S.F. shootings justified, district attorney says

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón declined to file criminal charges against the police officers involved in two separate fatal shootings, stating in a decision released Thursday that the officers’ actions in the 2014 and 2016 incidents were justified.

Officers Christopher Cotter, Ryan McEachern, James Johnson, Gordon Wong, Kurt Macauley and Omar Alvarenga “reasonably acted in self-defense and in defense of others” when they fired a total of 35 rounds at carjacking suspect Giovany Contreras-Sandoval in the Financial District on the morning of Sept. 25, 2014, Gascón said.

The officers believed that Contreras-Sandoval was aiming a revolver at them when they fired. The confrontation came just minutes after Contreras-Sandoval crashed a stolen car and fired a gun at least once at Good Samaritans coming to his aid.

About an hour before the shooting, ContrerasSandoval, 34, had approached a woman sitting in her white Cadillac Escalade while parked in the driveway of her Richmond home, pulled a handgun on her and demanded that she drive him away, according to investigators with the district attorney’s independent investigations bureau.

The woman managed to escape while Contreras-Sandoval was getting into the car, and Contreras-Sandoval drove off without her at about 4:50 a.m., investigators said. He then led officers from a number of Bay Area law enforcement agencies on a high-speed car chase through three counties, with the pursuit ending at Bush and Mason streets in San Francisco when officers lost sight of the stolen car.

Witnesses told investigators they saw the stolen Escalade careen northbound in the wrong direction on one-way Battery Street before entering the intersection at California Street on a red light. A blue Nissan Frontier pickup truck clipped the rear of the Escalade, causing it to flip onto its driver’s side and collide with a red Toyota Tacoma pickup that had been waiting at a red light.

One of the civilians that ran to help Contreras-Sandoval said he saw “the tip of a gun” and then a “flash.” He believed he had been shot at first, but medical personnel later determined he had been hit by shrapnel. An attorney working in a nearby law office saw a bullet come through his eleventh-floor office window, and crime scene investigators later matched the bullet fragment found in his office to an antique Russian revolver that ContrerasSandoval had in his possession when he was later shot.

The officers responding to the crash did not know about the gunfire, but approached with their weapons drawn because they believed Contreras-Sandoval to be the armed carjacker from the chase, investigators said. Several officers reported seeing him pull a gun from his waistband, and repeatedly ordered him to drop it.

“Is this a movie?” the officers said ContrerasSandoval asked them.

“This is your life,” Officer Alvarenga said he yelled back. “This is not a game. This is not a movie. This is your life. We will shoot you if you don’t drop the gun.”

The six officers fired at Contreras-Sandoval at 6:02 a.m., when they saw “his right arm come up, with a gun in hand, and with his elbow bent as if to aim the gun” at some of the officers, investigators said. He sustained 10 gunshot wounds, as well as several graze wounds, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Contreras-Sandoval had methamphetamine, hydrocodone and cocaine in his system at the time of his death.

The second shooting Gascón decided not to file charges in happened on Oct. 14, 2016, when Officer Kevin Downs was shot in the head by Nicholas McWherter. Following that shooting and an hour-long manhunt for McWherter, Officer Paul Dominguez and Officer Nathan Chew fatally shot the 26-year-old Pacifica resident after he fired multiple shots at Dominguez, investigators said.

Gascón said the officers “were justified in using deadly force because they faced an imminent danger to themselves and to others.”

McWherter had a history of mental illness, his family said, and customers at Lakeshore Plaza called the police when they witnessed him acting erratically in the parking lot.

Not knowing he was armed, Downs approached him as he ran down the sidewalk of Everglade Drive toward Sloat Boulevard. From 12 feet away, McWherter fired three times at Downs, striking him once on the top of his head and partially paralyzing him.

McWherter ran across Sloat and jumped a residential fence. Some of the other responding officers chased after him, but then stopped to help Downs. With a radio call of “officer down,” officers from around the city swarmed the scene, including Chew and Dominguez, who had been nearing the end of their shift.

They heard a report over the radio of a person running away from the police on Wawona Street, and headed toward where they believed they could cut that person off. At the end of the paved roadway on 28th Avenue at Stern Grove Park, McWherter appeared and fired three to five rounds at Dominguez, who had illuminated him with his flashlight.

Dominguez returned fire, shooting between five and more than 10 rounds. McWherter fell to the ground but the officers were unsure if he had been shot, investigators said. Dominguez reloaded his gun and McWherter sat up.

Dominguez and Chew said they instructed him to put his hands up, but he instead raised the gun in Dominguez’s direction, prompting both officers to fire several shots at him.

The officers continued to instruct him to put his hands up, but McWherter continued moving and ignoring the officers’ commands. At about 9:30 p.m., officers deployed flash-bang devices and then approached him with bulletproof shields and arrested him.

McWherter sustained gunshot wounds to his head, knee and left buttock, and died two days later.