Authorities released the name Friday of a 50-year-old man fatally shot by sheriff’s deputies at the end of a pursuit through Barona.
Jerone Peter Koornwinder of Santa Barbara allegedly drove a pickup truck toward them during a pursuit over back-country roads northeast of Barona Casino.
Barbara suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest early Wednesday afternoon in the 3100 block of Ketuull Uunyaa Way, on the grounds of the Barona Indian Reservation, according to sheriff’s officials.
The events that led to the gunfire began at about 1:30 p.m., when tribal police asked for help from sheriff’s personnel in apprehending a reckless motorist who refused to halt.
“While responding to the call, (a) deputy learned the driver had possibly tried to hit a tribal security officer with his truck,” sheriff’s Lt. Greg Rylaarsdam said.
Minutes later, the deputy spotted the white pickup and pulled it over.
The driver, later identified as Koornwinder, soon sped off again, leaving the deputy with a minor hand injury. After leading sheriff’s personnel and tribal police on a brief chase over rural roads and through off-road areas, the fleeing driver pulled to a stop near Wildcat Canyon Road and got out of his truck.
He was “extremely agitated and uncooperative with deputies,” who tried in vain to subdue him by shooting him with a beanbag-firing gun. Moments later, as the sheriff’s personnel were setting up a tire-deflating device in front of the truck, Koornwinder got back behind the wheel and accelerated toward them, according to Rylaarsdam.
Two deputies responded by opening fire on him, the lieutenant said. Following the gunfire, the pickup crashed into a marked sheriff’s patrol car, pushing it into a tribal-police vehicle.
The truck then collided with a Lexus before veering off the roadway and rolling to a halt in a patch of shrubbery. Koornwinder died at the scene.
Medics took three women who had been in the Lexus — two in their 70s and one in her 60s — to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. A 17-year-old girl who also had been riding in the car was unhurt.
Next week the deputies who fired on the suspect will be publicly identified, Rylaarsdam said.
— City News Service
