Shooting by Sacramento deputies ruled justified

SACRAMENTO >> Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies were justified when they shot to death a rock-throwing man who wounded a deputy and a police dog, the district attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

The DA’s office released results of its review of the May 8, 2017, shooting of Mikel McIntyre in Rancho Cordova.

Deputies had confronted the 32-year-old McIntyre after receiving 911 reports that he was hitting and choking a woman in a car in a store parking lot. The woman later was identified as his mother.

McIntyre also threw rocks, one of which gashed the back of a deputy’s head and another that injured a police dog, authorities said.

McIntyre, who ran or walked away from deputies several times during a pursuit, was shot seven times, with many bullets hitting him in the back. Three deputies fired a total of 28 rounds.

A previous report by the county’s inspector general concluded that the number of shots was “excessive, unnecessary, and put the community at risk.”

While at times McIntyre was “an imminent threat to deputies,” the danger eased as he fled across a major highway, that report said. Even had he grabbed another rock, he was so far away that deputies had time to consider less-lethal options, the report concluded.

However, the DA’s report only examined whether the deputies’ actions merited criminal prosecution. It concluded that McIntyre posed a “significant threat of death or serious physical harm” to deputies and others.

McIntyre’s family has sued over his death, contending that he was shot in the back as he ran away.

A request for comment from the family’s attorney, John Burris, was not immediately returned.

McIntyre’s mother, Brigett McIntyre, has said that her son had been acting strangely the day of the shooting and she called authorities who twice determined that his actions didn’t qualify him to be involuntarily committed for psychiatric observation.

“They turned him away, and then just hours later my son is dead,” she said at a June news conference announcing the lawsuit.