{"id":195629,"date":"2026-02-27T00:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T00:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/195629\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T00:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T00:05:08","slug":"police-officer-cleared-in-death-of-erratic-man-at-mcdonalds-in-fullerton-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/195629\/","title":{"rendered":"Police officer cleared in death of erratic man at McDonald\u2019s in Fullerton \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Fullerton police corporal who fired five beanbag rounds at a man acting erratically and swinging a belt in front of a McDonald\u2019s nearly two years ago was found to have been justified in doing so by the Orange County District Attorney\u2019s Office, which released a report on its investigation Thursday, Feb. 26.<\/p>\n

The fifth beanbag round fired by the corporal on March 6, 2024, pierced the chest cavity of 50-year-old Alejandro Campos Rios of Buena Park, causing him to bleed profusely. He died at the scene.<\/p>\n

The DA\u2019s office concluded that the corporal reasonably believed that because of Campos Rios\u2019 erratic behavior, he was a threat to harm himself or others, namely McDonald\u2019s employees who were inside the restaurant but not far from Campos Rios, when the corporal fired the beanbag rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is substantial evidence that his actions were reasonable and justified under the circumstances,\u201d the report concludes.<\/p>\n

The report earlier noted the concern of the restaurant manager and the corporal\u2019s concern for the first responding officer. The report says the corporal could tell \u201cthere was a stress in his voice,\u201d over the radio \u201clike something bad was going on or there\u2019s some heightened, uh, level of awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fullerton police officers were called to the restaurant, at 1341 S. Brookhurst Rd., by a manager about 3 a.m.<\/a> who said two men were acting erratically near the front doors and possibly under the influence of drugs and told a dispatcher she was concerned for the safety of employees who would be arriving soon for the morning shift, police have said in a critical incident video.<\/p>\n

Officers arrived and found Campos Rios shirtless and holding a belt near the front door of the restaurant<\/a>. At times, he swung the belt around his body, yelled at the officers and sang a jingle, body worn camera video released by the department shows.<\/p>\n

Officers tried unsuccessfully to get Campos Rios to drop the belt, but he did not cooperate. As he advanced toward one officer, a Taser was deployed twice with no effect before the corporal fired the five bean bag rounds, the last hitting Campos Rios in the chest, the video shows.<\/p>\n

They then applied a chest seal and attempted to help him, at one point applying the pads of a defibrillator, but the machine told them not to shock the man.<\/p>\n

Campos Rios also suffered nonpenetrating injuries to the right side of his abdomen, right forearm and left wrist, the DA\u2019s report said. A section on a toxicology examination of Campos Rios\u2019 blood was redacted in the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fullerton police corporal who fired five beanbag rounds at a man acting erratically and swinging a belt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,723,138,100,609,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-195629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-police-shooting","15":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}