A man who shot a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy Friday and was arrested with an undetected gun still in his pocket fatally shot himself at sheriff's headquarters when he was left unhandcuffed in an interview room.
"It's obviously a large mistake," sheriff's spokesman Rick Carr said. "It's a rarity when something like this happens."
At about 9:30 a.m., Deputy Michael Parham, 31, tried to pull a driver over for a traffic violation on West Adams Street in an unincorporated area northwest of San Bernardino, Carr said. But the car had sped away, authorities said, and the brief chase ended when the driver lost control while making a left turn in the 2300 block of California Street, driving over a curb and flattening the front tires.
Getting out of the car, the driver fired a .45-caliber handgun twice, sending one bullet through Parham's windshield and another through the hood of the squad car, authorities said. Parham remained in the car as the gunman ran past, firing.
Two residents said they heard six shots.
Carr said at least two bullets struck Parham, one glancing off his bulletproof vest and the other penetrating his abdomen.
Parham, a six-year veteran, was in critical but stable condition at Loma Linda University Medical Center after surgery for non-life-threatening injuries.
Jess Carrillo said he went outside his California Street home after he heard the shots, watching neighbors and then law enforcement officers rush to Parham, who slumped forward in his car. He said he saw a man rushing from house to house through yards, apparently looking for an open door.
A woman who had been outside holding her 2-month-old when the shooting happened said she rushed inside and locked her back door just as the man tried to charge inside. She said he took off his gloves, jacket and shirt in her backyard and fled.
A block north, resident Sergio Quintero, 21, said the man, in Spanish, offered him $10 for the shirt Quintero was wearing. Quintero obliged. "He also asked me for a rake and shovel, and he began raking in my frontyard," Quintero said.
As sirens neared, Quintero said, the man "told me the police wanted him for too many tickets." The arriving officers, he said, "asked me if he lived here. I said, 'No,' and they grabbed him."
Carr said sheriff's deputies and San Bernardino police did a cursory pat-down of the suspect's legs and torso. Quintero said he didn't see that. "They just grabbed him and took him into the police car," Quintero said. "I tried to watch more, but a police officer in my house said to stop looking out the window."
