The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office has released video from a shooting involving a deputy in Lakeside earlier this month.
Deputy Chris Bearss fired on a man, 30, on Dec. 10 after the latter claimed to have a gun and then made a threatening move toward him, authorities said.
In the video and accompanying briefing released Wednesday, the sheriff’s office said the events began shortly before 10:30 a.m. that day, when the Lakeside Fire Department received a report of a man possibly experiencing a drug overdose on Briette Place.
Sheriff’s deputies also responded to the emergency call at the request of firefighters, and arrived to find the suspect no longer there. They began searching the neighborhood, and found him on an embankment in the neighborhood near Lake Jennings.
Bearss approaches the man from the other side of a chain-link fence, and the suspect allegedly tells him he is armed with a gun, then “reaches behind his back towards his waistband as if he is reaching for the gun eventually getting into a shooting stance with his hands,” sheriff’s officials said. “Deputy Bearss fires his weapon at the man, but misses. The man then runs away. Deputy Bearss chases after him.”
The man was eventually arrested by multiple deputies a short distance away. He then allegedly went on to assault a medic while en route to Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa for a post-arrest evaluation and was booked into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of resisting arrest and battering an emergency worker.
No weapon was located at the scene, authorities said. The San Diego Police Department is investigating the shooting under terms of a regional agreement to prevent conflicts of interest.
Bearss has been with the county law enforcement agency for about two years.