Two Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies lawfully shot and killed a man who charged at them with a knife last year, the county district attorney’s office said Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office report, 43-year-old Jose Neftali Martinez-Nolasco had barricaded himself in his car for hours after a traffic stop on Oct. 27 while San Jose police and deputies attempted to get him to surrender.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Deputy Christian Spinola pulled Nolasco over in San Jose at approximately 7:30 p.m. for expired vehicle registration tags, according to prosecutors<\/a>. Nolasco stopped briefly, then continued to drive a short distance before pulling over again. He then barricaded himself inside his vehicle, using objects to block his car windows, according to the district attorney’s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nolasco told deputies “he would rather die than return to jail,” the district attorney’s office said. According to the DA’s report, he “told deputies that he was armed with a knife and the only way the situation would end was if deputies killed him.”\u00a0<\/p>\n At approximately 9:30 p.m., a Deputy Elizabeth Lacey fired multiple pepper ball rounds into the vehicle to force Nolasco to exit, the district attorney’s office said. He exited the vehicle brandishing a 9-inch knife and charged the deputies, despite their commands for him to drop the weapon, prosecutors wrote in the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n Body-camera footage shows the deputies firing 40mm sponge-like rounds – a “less-lethal” form of ammunition – while yelling at Nolasco to drop the knife. The footage then shows Nolasco running at the deputies. Deputies Jose Rios and Douglas Ulrich fired several gunshots.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nolasco was shot a total of six times, according to the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n Deputies immediately began providing life-saving measures before medical personnel arrived and transported Nolasco to Valley Medical Center, where he later died. Authorities later said a preliminary autopsy found meth and amphetamines in his system.<\/p>\n “The evidence overwhelmingly shows that Nolasco had no interest in resolving the situation peacefully or accepting any of the resources or assistance deputies offered,” the district attorney’s report states. “Instead, he deliberately created a scenario designed to leave the responding officers with no safe alternative.”<\/p>\n Subscribe<\/p>\n There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n