Redding Police Officer Shoots and Injures Man in Parking Lot Near Safeway

Yellow police lines encircled a part of the Safeway parking lot near the corner of Cypress and Churn Creek on Wednesday afternoon, March 26. A Redding Police Department (RPD) Facebook post notified the public of increased police presence shortly after the shooting occurred at 4:02 pm.

By 6 pm, RPD Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt was available to speak with reporters and share a few more details, explaining that RPD officers had located a wanted suspect in the parking lot. 

“When they attempted to contact him,” Schmidt said, “an officer-involved shooting occurred.” 

The person who was shot by the officer then fled the scene by vehicle, Schmidt said, crashing his car a few blocks away. There were no passengers involved. The suspect was transported to the hospital for treatment and no officers or bystanders were injured in the incident. 

Schmidt could not comment on whether the suspect was armed and did not specify details about the police’s attempt to contact the individual. Neither the individual who was shot, or the shooting officer, have been named by police so far.

According to an eyewitness, who spoke to Shasta Scout after being interviewed by police, the officer who contacted the suspect did not announce themselves as police, or issue any commands, before firing a gun into the suspect’s vehicle. 

“There was no command to stop, nothing,” said Beverly Weber, a 62-year old Redding local, who spoke with Shasta Scout both at the scene and by phone the next morning. 

RPD Chief Brian Barner said he could not comment on whether or not that was true, emphasizing that body camera footage will be available to the public within 45 days.

According to Weber, she was sitting in her car with her friend Scott Asbill, also 62 years old, when a police vehicle parked just feet in front of them, at a diagonal. 

Weber says an officer wearing a shoulder holster exited his squad car and approached a vehicle that she described as a “gold, older SUV.”

“Next thing you know… (the officer) pulled out a nine millimeter and started shooting through the windows,” she said.

“Two shots in the windshield – missed from point blank range,” her friend Asbill added. “Go back to the gun range and practice some more,” he added, a reference to the fact that the victim wasn’t killed by RPD’s fire.

After the driver was shot, RPD said, the vehicle drove away. The driver exited the parking lot turning right onto Alfreda Way and then left onto Downward Lane, where the crash occurred. That second crime scene, at the corner of Downward and Alfreda, blocks away from the shooting, was also roped off Wednesday as investigators did their work.  

Importantly, a detail of Weber’s eyewitness testimony is clearly contradicted by a statement from Police Chief Brian Barner. While she described the shooting officer as plain-clothed, Chief Barner told Shasta Scout in response to a request for comment on key details of her statement that the shooting officer was in “full uniform in a marked Redding Police patrol car.” 

There were also other police officers in marked vehicles and motorcycles at the scene before the shooting occurred, Barner added, a detail that matches Weber’s statements to Shasta Scout. Information shared by another community member, Aaron Hatch, indicates that a heavy policy presence of about six vehicles was already on site at the lot at 3 pm, an hour before the shooting.

After the suspect was shot, Weber said she and Asbill were were both interviewed by officers separately, commenting that she was asked “at least four times, at different intervals” about whether the shooting officer had issued a command before he fired his weapon.

Once released by RPD, body camera footage could answer many of the currently unresolved questions about the incident such as whether the officer identified himself or gave any commands, when they drew their weapon, whether the suspect was armed, and whether the vehicle’s angle of motion posed a deadly threat to the officer.

In California, there are specific circumstances under which police officers can justifiably use lethal force. Assembly Bill 392 declares that police may use their firearms during an arrest if “necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person.”

They can also use lethal force “to apprehend a fleeing person for a felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury, if the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or serious bodily injury to another unless the person is immediately apprehended.”

As always occurs after an individual is killed or injured by police fire, the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office will conduct an “independent review” of the incident, the results of which will eventually be released to the public.

Though not applicable in this particular shooting, incidents which result in a community member’s death at the hands of law enforcement are also subject to review by California’s Department of Justice. 

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