By Sara Beth Williams–
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office released body cam footage over the weekend of an officer involved shooting that took place in Citrus Heights on Interstate 80 at the beginning of July.
The officer-involved shooting occurred on the morning of July 5 following the deputies’ pursuit of a man wanted for domestic violence and theft of a vehicle.
The 9-minute video shared on the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s social media page began with a recap of the events that led up to the officer involved shooting.
Video footage shared included pursuit of the vehicle, and several aerial shots indicating the route where the pursuit took place, and aerial shots of the interstate where the officer involved shotting eventually occured.
Footage shows the vehicle traveling down an empty interstate, slowing, and turning to face in the wrong direction on the freeway, facing deputies.
Video footage of the moments leading up to the shooting shows multiple officers ordering the suspect to put his hands out of the vehicle with nothing in his hands. When the suspect showed his gun and pointed it toward officers, a total of five deputies fired their weapons at the suspect in response. The video shows a viewpoint from each law enforcement officer that fired shots. The faces of deputies were blurred in the video.
The end of the video also showed officers attempting to determine whether the suspect was still alive by shooting bean bags at him, in order to determine whether it was safe for officers to approach as he was still inside the sedan. Following that, the video shows officers approaching and removing the suspect from the vehicle.
See the full video here: (Content warming: This video shared by Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office contains gun violence from multiple points of view.) July 5 officer-involved shooting body cam footage – Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
Background: On Sunday, July 5 around 10 a.m., the Sacramento County Sheriff Department said in a press release that their Communications Center received a call from “a battered and bloody woman screaming for help,” in the 2200 block of Zinfandel Drive in Rancho Cordova.
Deputies contacted the victim, who described surviving three days of brutal beatings from her ex-husband, 38-year-old William Kreuzer.
“She reported being beaten, pistol-whipped, and strangled until she lost consciousness. Another vicious beating occurred that morning. The victim described how she “played dead” until the suspect left the room. That allowed her to flee the home and seek help,” police said in the release.
The suspect, who was said to be armed at all times, was presumed to still be at the residence. When deputies arrived to find the suspect gone and a vehicle missing, deputies put out a BOLO (be on the lookout) for the stolen vehicle to all neighboring jurisdictions.
A short time later, North Patrol deputies located the vehicle on Fair Oaks Boulevard near the intersection of Kenneth Avenue using license plate reader technology, police said.
“Without the LPR alert, deputies had no known location for Kreuzer, or the stolen vehicle,” Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson and public information officer Edward Igoe said in the video.
Upon attempting a vehicle stop, the suspect fled from deputies, initiating a police pursuit. The pursuit eventually traveled onto eastbound I-80, where an officer-involved shooting occurred just west of the Antelope Road exit.
“The suspect was struck with gunfire and ultimately pronounced dead at the scene by the Sacramento Metro Fire Department. No deputies were injured during this incident,” officials said in the release.
Because the officer-involved shooting occurred on the interstate, California Highway Patrol is investigating the officer involved shooting, Igoe said. A parallel investigation will also be conducted by the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, and Professional Standards Division, and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office will conduct its own independent review of the incident.
