A suspect was wounded Thursday when San Diego police opened fire on him following a chase that ended in a chain-reaction crash.
The man appeared to reach for what looked like a pistol, police said, prompting the shooting. The San Diego Police Department also took the unusual step of releasing same-day video footage of the incident. Typically such videos are released several days after an officer’s use of force.
The pursuit from Lincoln Park to the La Presa community began shortly after 12:30 p.m., when a patrol tried to pull over the suspect in the vicinity of Euclid and Imperial avenues, Lt. Cesar Jimenez said.
The driver of the stolen vehicle refused to yield and fled to the east, at one point running over a tire-flattening spike strip police laid in his path and eventually leading officers to a neighborhood in the unincorporated area north of Sweetwater Reservoir.
There, the fleeing suspect lost control of the stolen car, sending it crashing off the roadway at Gillespie Drive and Jamacha Road at about 1:30 p.m., Officer Colin Steinbroner said. The vehicle struck a light pole, which then fell onto an SDPD cruiser, the spokesman said.
At that point, officers had the suspect get out of the car and turn his back to them with his hands in the air. They ordered him to lie down face first in the street.
In the footage, posted on the SDPD YouTube account, the suspect can be seen outside a white compact-SUV, surrounded by four police cars. He gets onto his knees but appears off balance as another officer is heard asking, “Is that a real gun?,” apparently referring to an object on the roadway to the right of the suspect.
Moments later, he leaned toward the object with his right hand extended, and the officer whose body camera was recording the scene fired two rounds at his back. The suspect collapsed on his left side.
Paramedics took the suspect to a trauma center. There was no word on his condition late Thursday. In the YouTube post, police also released a still image of what they identified as the object beside the suspect, described in a news release as “an item that appeared to be a firearm.”
An officer was treated at the scene of the shooting for cuts suffered when the falling light pole broke a window on a patrol vehicle, Steinbroner said.
Updated 8:10 p.m. Jan. 22, 2026
