The gunman believed to have shot a married couple dead downtown was facing a court hearing in which the female victim was seeking a restraining order against him.
Rachael Martinez, 31, was granted a temporary restraining order against Christopher Farrell, 26, on Oct. 7, following a domestic violence complaint three days earlier, San Diego police said Thursday.
Martinez and her husband, Jose Medina, 39, were seated in a car in the 1300 block of Union Street when Farrell apparently opened fire on them shortly before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
The restraining order hearing had been continued to Wednesday and police said “it appears likely” that Martinez and Medina had parked three blocks north of San Diego’s Hall of Justice for the purpose of attending the proceeding.
It is unclear, they added, if Farrell was ever served with initial temporary order. Investigators said Martinez and Farrell “had a prior dating relationship.”
Martinez and Medina died at the scene. Farrell fled about a mile north, before a bystander near West Juniper Street and Kettner Boulevard in Little Italy pointed him out to four San Diego Harbor Police officers. Two fired on Farrell, after he allegedly shot and wounded a third officer.
Doctors at a local hospital pronounced the suspect, who was struck multiple times in the upper torso, dead. The officer, who joined the Harbor Police in September after spending a year with the San Diego Police Department, remains hospitalized after being wounded in the hip.
Martinez’s complaints against Farrell, a former security guard whose company assigned him to the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, included false imprisonment and sex crimes, police said.
Officers investigating the allegations responded to the MTS office at 1600 Newton Ave. and arrested Farrell, who was later fired by his firm.
The arrest was assigned to a detective in the SDPD’s Domestic Violence Unit. The detective re-interviewed Martinez and followed up on the case, including a consultation with a prosecutor specializing in domestic violence.
But nothing else came of Martinez’s complaint until Wednesday’s scheduled hearing. “At the time, the case had insufficient evidence and corroboration to immediately move forward,” police said Thursday.
Officials said the double homicide “remains an extremely active and ongoing investigation,” while also adding details of how the shootout with Farrell unfolded.
The suspect, police said, reloaded his firearm as he fled the scene on Ash Street, then hid behind a large electrical box while a helicopter circled overhead broadcasting a description of the shooter – a white male wearing a green shirt with blue jeans, hiking boots and a hat.
During the exchange of gunfire with the Harbor Police, he fired on the officers and also sent two rounds into a patrol car. Detectives found a semiautomatic handgun, shell casings, folding knives and an empty ammunition magazine by the electrical box.
The suspect, they said, also had a knife sheath clipped to his pants and three more magazines in one of his pants pockets.
City News Service contributed to this report.
