Police shoot, kill wanted man in North Sacramento after SWAT standoff
Sacramento police shot and killed a wanted suspect Tuesday evening after he bolted from a home where a SWAT standoff lasted more than two hours in North Sacramento.
The shooting occurred in the 500 block of Wisconsin Avenue in the Gardenland neighborhood, just east of Northgate Boulevard and several blocks south of Interstate 80.
Detectives initially arrived there Tuesday afternoon to follow up on a search for a suspect “who was wanted for the attempted murder of a Sacramento Police Department officer with a firearm in the north Sacramento area,” according to a news release from the department early Wednesday.
Police described the wanted suspect as a white man in his 50s, but did not disclose his name. Sacramento County coroner officials need to properly notify the suspect’s family before releasing his name, according to police. Coroner officials on Wednesday afternoon said they were not ready to release his name.
The shooting occurred about two miles west of where a Sacramento officer was targeted by gunfire nearly a month ago.
Officers identified the suspect at the time as Albert Wheeler. Authorities issued a Blue Alert for the 50-year-old Wheeler hours after the Aug. 4 incident in which he allegedly shot at an officer following a domestic disturbance call.
The following day, authorities had located Wheeler’s truck outside of a church in the Arden Arcade area, but Wheeler was not found. Federal authorities had issued a $5,000 reward for his capture. Sacramento police said Tuesday, hours before the shooting, that Wheeler had still not been found.
The California Highway Patrol on Wednesday tweeted: “This Blue Alert has been deactivated. The subject has been located,” but did not provide further details.
Police on Wednesday declined to provide any other details about the attempted murder case they were following up on, Wheeler’s whereabouts or the shooting. Sgt. Sabrina Briggs, a police spokeswoman, told reporters Tuesday night that those details would be provided once the suspect’s name was released. Briggs also would not say how the other people in the home knew the suspect.
On Tuesday afternoon, police detectives confirmed the suspect they were looking for was inside the Wisconsin Avenue home. Others were with the suspect inside the home.
About 3:40 p.m., police crisis negotiators and two SWAT teams arrived and took over. The negotiators contacted residents inside and had them safely exit the home. Several adjacent homes and a nearby gas station also were evacuated.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the negotiators contacted the suspect, who had remained inside of the home, and they began trying to convince him to safely surrender himself, police said. The negotiators continued to speak to the suspect on a phone for nearly an hour while officers remained in positions surrounding the home.
“While on the phone, the suspect made statements to negotiators that he wasn’t going to go back to prison,” police officials said in the news release.
About three hours after negotiators arrived, a police helicopter spotted the suspect running away from the back of the home toward an officer positioned on the perimeter, Briggs said. Radio traffic indicated the man fled at 6:53 p.m. Officers saw the man try to escape by hopping over a fence, according to radio traffic.
Police determined the man was armed with a semi-automatic handgun, which was “later recovered in his immediate vicinity,” the department said in the overnight news release.
Within seconds, an officer fired multiple rounds at him, striking him at least once, according to the news release. Reports of “shots fired, shots fired” were followed by “suspect is down” 10 seconds later, according to the radio traffic. An officer is heard saying “he’s south of the gas station, not moving.”
Officers provided first aid to the man, Briggs said, before Sacramento fire personnel arrived and tried life-saving measures before pronouncing him dead at the scene.
No officers were hurt, the department said on social media.
The department’s Homicide Unit and Internal Affairs Division is investigating the shooting. The Office of Public Safety Accountability and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office are providing oversight by monitoring the investigation, police said.
In accordance with the city’s use-of-force policy and state law, body camera video and audio associated with the shooting will be released within 30 days. Police officials said detectives were in the process of identifying and retrieving video associated with the shooting.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 8:09 PM.
