DA clears officer in fatal police shooting
Officer ‘ had no other reasonable choice than to utilize deadly force’
REDWOOD CITY — After a 43-year-old armed man chased his estranged wife in an office parking lot in March, firing one shot in the air, a Redwood City police officer shot and killed him.
Thursday, the district attorney concluded the shooting was justified.
Redwood City police officer Joseph O’Gorman “had no other reasonable choice than to utilize deadly force” during the confrontation March 21 with Robert Lee Eichen, 43, of Redwood City, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe wrote in a release.
Eichen died from a selfinflicted bullet and police gunfire after threatening his estranged wife with a handgun at her workplace, according to the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office. The shots were fired almost simultaneously.
The situation unfolded at 2:15 p.m. when Eichen’s wife made a “frantic” 911 call to report her husband was chasing her in the parking lot of her workplace with a handgun. At one point while chasing his wife, Robert Eichen fired a shot from his Smith & Wesson .357 revolver into the air, according to Wagstaffe.
The woman had filed for a divorce earlier in March and told dispatchers that she had a restraining order against her husband.
O’Gorman, working as a plainclothes detective, was among the first officers to arrive. Eichen ignored repeated orders to drop the gun and continued to move the weapon around, according to the DA report. As Eichen raised his weapon to street level, O’Gorman fired a single shot from a rifle.
As the officer opened fire, Eichen raised the gun in his mouth and fired. The coroner ruled Eichen died from both gunshots, each of which would have been fatal.
“Officer Joseph O’Gorman exercised his police powers in a lawful manner against a person who produced a firearm and raised it towards officers,” Wagstaffe wrote in his report. “Confronted by a subject who was armed, public safety required responding officers to use deadly force to protect themselves and others in the immediate vicinity.”