The San Diego Police Department on Tuesday released body-camera footage of two separate incidents where their officers shot suspects last week, including one that shows an SDPD officer shoot a man with an 11-month-old baby and another that shows officers shoot a man holding someone at knifepoint.
The two shootings happened 12 hours apart. Both videos released by the department have been edited with text, added graphics pauses and other details.
Chollas Creek Shooting
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: The video below was edited and released by San Diego police and shows an SDPD officer shooting a suspect. Viewer discretion is advised.
In the Chollas Creek incident, SDPD officers were called at about 10:20 p.m. to the 400 block of 47th Street by a woman who said her ex-boyfriend and father of her child, identified as 29-year-old Steffon Nutall, went into her apartment and threatened to shoot her if she didn’t open the bedroom door.
The woman, fearing for her life, let Nutall into the bedroom, investigators said. In the video, Nutall could be heard picking up the phone, which still had the dispatcher on the line, and threatening to harm the woman and their daughter.
“If the police come to this door, (expletive), I’m going to kill everything in here. I promise you that. So you call 911, (expletive), I’m killing people,” Nutall said in the phone call recording.
Nutall then grabbed the girl, investigators said. He was spotted leaving the apartment with the baby as officers arrived, deputies said, and he fled toward the Orange Line’s 47th Street Trolley Station and then into a nearby apartment complex.
Multiple officers were searching the area when Officer Robert Gladysz located Nutall, who was “lying in a bush on a steep, wooded hill” in the apartment complex’s corner, the department wrote in the video.
Nutall was told by Gladysz to show his hands, according to the video.
The department says Nutall, using his right hand, then pointed an object toward Gladysz before the officer shot his service weapon, striking Nutall. Ten rounds could be heard in the video.
“He pointed the gun at me,” Gladysz said in the video.
The department says Nutall was holding his daughter under his left arm at the time he was shot.
“I didn’t see a kid. I saw the gun,” Gladysz, who has been with the department for a year and a half, told another officer who asked if the suspect had the baby in his possession.
SDPD’s helicopter helped officers find the baby at the top of a wall. Nutall was in front of that wall, SDPD said. Officers told Nutall to put both hands up.
“I can’t,” Nutall could be heard saying from a second officer’s body-worn camera. “I have no gun.”
Officers began lifesaving measures at the scene, which continued until paramedics arrived, who took Nutall to the hospital where he underwent surgery, San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Mike Krugh said. As of Tuesday, Nutall is still recovering from the multiple gunshot wounds, police said.
The baby was not seriously injured in the incident and was returned to her mother, who was also unharmed, police said. No officers were injured.
The video released by SDPD also includes security camera video that captured Nutall dropping a gun in the trolley station parking lot. The gun on the ground was also captured on a third officer’s body-worn camera.
The department said the officers chasing Nutall did not see the firearm next to the curb but that the gun had been recovered.
Nutall faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threats, burglary, child endangerment and felon in possession of a firearm.
The officer who fired at the suspect has been placed on paid administrative leave, per SDPD policy.
The Sheriff’s Department is investigating the shooting due to a memorandum of understanding that limits law enforcement from investigating their own officer-involved incidents.
It is still unclear what was in Nutall’s right hand when he was shot. Part of the investigation will also look into why the officer opened fire with a child so close, Krugh said.
