GILROY _ Police have released an officer’s body-camera video from last month showing how a man who called 9-1-1 to surrender for an arrest warrant shot at an approaching officer, who fired back and killed him in front of a downtown post office.
The footage, released Thursday, affirms initial accounts given about the Sept. 8 shooting near Fourth and Eigleberry streets. David Lopez, 40, died in the brief shootout.
Lopez was wanted by authorities in connection with an Aug. 31 shooting on Wren Avenue that injured a person. Around 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 8, he called emergency dispatchers and told them he wanted to turn himself in to police, who had obtained an arrest warrant for him alleging an attempted murder.
“So you guys are looking for me or whatever. I’m right here,” Lopez said in dispatch recordings, during which he also said he was intoxicated.
He also assured dispatchers that he was not armed. The video shows a female officer drive up to the post office and use her loudspeaker to tell Lopez to lay down on the ground. Instead, he fires two shots at the officer’s car, hitting one of its doors.
That prompts the officer to get out of her vehicle, crouch behind an open driver’s side door for cover, and fire back at least two rounds. Lopez was hit; a paramedic’s call would later indicate that he suffered a head wound. He was taken to a local hospital and was pronounced dead.
Police reported that after the shooting, they recovered two handguns they believe Lopez was carrying. Seven rounds were fired in total between Lopez and the officer.
The officer involved in the shooting has yet to be publicly identified by the police department. Her identity should be disclosed, at the latest, in a report by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which is investigating the case alongside Gilroy police. Such shooting reports are published anywhere between a few months to a year after a police shooting in the county.
