SAN JOSE — Reports of a landlord menacing his tenants with gun threats over the weekend led to a police search and confrontation that ended with officers fatally shooting the man after ducking a gunshot, San Jose Police Chief Paul Joseph said Tuesday.
“This was a tragic outcome we all wish could have turned out different,” Joseph said at a news conference Tuesday at the San Jose Police Department. “I’m extremely grateful that in such a close, confined space, none of our officers were hit by the round that it appears the suspect fired at them.”
Ted Lieu, 69, of San Jose, was fatally shot by San Jose police officers on Oct. 11, 2026 near his home on Locke Drive after a reported tenant dispute in which he was accused of brandishing guns. Police say he fired once as officers were retreating from him in a nearby shed, and returned fire. (Photo courtesy of San Jose Police Dept.)
The man who was shot and killed, 69-year-old Ted Lieu, had been accused earlier in the year of assaulting the same tenant who called police around 8 p.m. Sunday night to report that a dispute over rent and the tenant’s guest was becoming violent.
When police officers responded to the home in the 3200 block of Locke Drive — a residential street located on the backside of the athletic fields of Andrew Hill High School — the tenant alleged that Lieu had a gun in his pants pocket and pushed a guest in the rented residence.
But the residents ultimately decided that they did not want a criminal case to arise out of the conflict, and police officers left, Joseph said. A little over an hour later, around 9:30 p.m., officers got another 911 call from the area, in which the tenant reported that Lieu was standing in a hallway holding a long gun and refusing to let the tenant and guest leave the home.
Officers went to the site and secured the safety of the tenant and guest, and got word that Lieu had fled into the neighborhood, possibly to an RV a few blocks away toward a cul-de-sac.
Joseph said that as the officers were securing a yard area near the RV, they opened the door to a shed and spotted Lieu, who they reported was holding a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun. The officers retreated, and soon after one gunshot was fired from the shed.
Three officers, using handguns, returned fire toward the shed, Joseph said, and they never heard another movement from inside. After trying to rouse a response from Lieu using a flashbang grenade and projectile launcher, at 12:17 a.m. officers entered the shed and found Lieu dead from gunshot injuries.
“These officers knew there was an armed man hiding,” Joseph said. “None of them hesitated, despite knowing the risk.”
San Jose police released an image of a semiautomatic handgun they say was fired by 69-year-old Ted Lieu during a confrontation with officers on Oct. 11, 2026 near his home on Locke Drive. Lieu reportedly brandished a gun at a tenant during a dispute, touching off a series of police calls that ended in the deadly shooting. (Photo courtesy of San Jose Police Dept.)
Joseph said that officers found a handgun lying near Lieu, and discovered that a bullet cartridge had failed to properly eject and jammed the firearm after his first shot. A search of Lieu’s residence also reportedly turned up a loaded assault-style .22-caliber rifle and a third unspecified gun in a trash can.
Lieu was the subject of an active misdemeanor arrest warrant for a January allegation that he assaulted his tenant. Joseph added that Lieu previously had his firearms seized in connection with an involuntary psychiatric hold in 2024 — after he allegedly made a gun threat in a car repair dispute — but that a temporary gun prohibition from that incident had expired.
Of the officers who opened fire, one has eight years with SJPD, while the other two have seven years with the department. They were placed on paid administrative leave and a shooting investigation was launched by the SJPD homicide unit in tandem with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which will be monitored by the police department’s Internal Affairs unit, the City Attorney’s Office, and the Office of the Independent Police Auditor, all of which are protocol following a fatal police shooting in the county.
No civilians or officers were injured, Joseph said.
Two previous fatal police shootings in San Jose this year also involved close-quarters clashes, but they ended with officers being wounded. In January, a serial armed robbery suspect initiated a police chase to Hollister, got into two shootouts with law-enforcement there, and drove back to San Jose, where he shot and wounded a police sergeant in the head at point-blank range before he was fatally shot and then run over by a police SUV.
In August, another repeat armed robbery suspect was fleeing from police and ran into a randomly chosen home in the city’s Goodyear neighborhood, where he got into a shootout in a bathroom in which the suspect was killed and an officer was hit twice in the upper body.
Vice Mayor Pam Foley lauded the officers involved in the Sunday shooting.
“We often ask for officers to walk into dangerous situations … we expect them to protect innocent people, defuse dangerous situations, and make the right decisions in less time than it takes the rest of us to even understand what’s happening,” Foley said.
Anyone with information related to Sunday night’s police shooting can contact the SJPD Homicide Unit at 408-277-5283, or email Sgt. Ivan Barragan at 4106@sanjoseca.gov, Sgt. Alan Yee at 4342@sanjoseca.gov, or Detective Mike Harrington at 4365@sanjoseca.gov. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-STOP (7867) or at siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.