{"id":516234,"date":"2026-11-02T18:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T18:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/516234\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T18:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T18:54:08","slug":"i-heard-a-loud-explosion-oakland-officer-describes-coming-under-fire-inside-stopped-patrol-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/516234\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I heard a loud explosion’: Oakland officer describes coming under fire inside stopped patrol car"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 A city police officer took the witness stand and recalled what it was like to go from a routine night on patrol to being the victim of an ambush shooting that authorities allege<\/a> had no apparent motive beyond killing a cop.<\/p>\n

Officer Khatanbaatar Batzorig was sitting in his patrol car alone, writing up a report about a stolen car blocking the road near Seminary and Kuhnle avenues around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2025. He was so focused on his writing he didn\u2019t notice an SUV pulling up behind him and coming to a stop. A few moments later, when gunshots rang out, Batzorig testified he didn\u2019t fully comprehend what had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard a loud explosion inside my vehicle and I thought it was my fire extinguisher went off,\u201d he testified. \u201cAnd as that happened, when I looked in my life side mirror, I saw a vehicle parked right behind my patrol vehicle, and right\u00a0\u00a0after I heard several gunshots go off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aware that he was under attack, Batzorig said he \u201cducked down, trying to cover my body,\u201d and never unholstered his weapon. The SUV drove onto Interstate 580 a few moments later. When Batzorig inspected his vehicle, he found a bullet hole on the trunk that prosecutors say lined up with where he\u2019d been seated.<\/p>\n

Batzorig testified about this early morning shooting on Sept. 24, at the preliminary hearing for the man who prosecutors say was trying to kill him that day. He was identified as Robert Anthony Blackwell III, 36, after police say they matched him and his vehicle to surveillance footage from a nearby gas station within an hour of the shooting. The SUV, smashed and abandoned, was discovered in another part of Oakland and contained three shell casings, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Blackwell has been charged with attempted murder and assault on an officer, but prosecutors can point to no specific motive beyond his alleged intent to kill.<\/p>\n

Blackwell\u2019s lawyer, Tamani Taylor, argued at the hearing that prosecutors had failed to prove basically everything. She said it wasn\u2019t necessarily Blackwell in the gas station video, nor had the District Attorney established that it was even the same car, nor could they prove the man in the video was possessing a real firearm, as opposed to a BB gun, she argued. Even with all that, she said to call the shooting an attempted murder \u2014 which requires prosecutors prove specific intent \u2014 was \u201ccomplete speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Elena Condes disagreed, finding that the shooting appeared intentional and that the footage appears to implicate Blackwell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court looked very carefully at the videos and expanded on the videos. I think that there\u2019s sufficient cause to believe that Mr. Blackwell is the person in that video,\u201d Condes said in court.<\/p>\n

Blackwell\u2019s trial date has not yet been set. He is next due in court on Nov. 16.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another thing about Blackwell\u2019s history that authorities believe implicates him. It\u2019s the second time in his life he has been accused of firing at an Oakland cop. In 2015 Blackwell and another person allegedly pointed guns at an Oakland police officer who was working undercover, then shot at a patrol cop who showed up to assist the undercover officer. All that occurred during a homicide investigation, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Blackwell later accepted a plea deal and a 10-year prison term. He was released from state prison after serving about four years. At the time of the shooting of Batzorig\u2019s vehicle, Blackwell was out on bail with pending gun charges, court records show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 A city police officer took the witness stand and recalled what it was like to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[861,862,143,863,145,144,2452,52599],"class_list":["post-516234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california-crime","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-crime","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police","tag-oakland-police-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516234","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=516234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}