Sacramento police release video of fatal shooting of woman who stabbed officer

The Sacramento Police Department on Friday afternoon released video of two officers fatally shooting a woman who stabbed one of them with a knife during a confrontation late last month.

The police shooting occurred in an alley near the 2500 block of Del Paso Boulevard, near Plaza Avenue and Rio Linda Boulevard in Old North Sacramento. The Police Department released an edited video with police narration of the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting. The department also released unedited video from three body-worn cameras, a dashboard camera and a security camera from a nearby building.

In a news release issued Friday, the Police Department did not include the name of woman shot by officers.

The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office has not released the woman’s name. The Coroner’s Office will release her name after her family has been notified.

Shortly before 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 27, officers were called to a reported assault in the area. Officers arrived and found a woman with visible injuries she suffered in the assault. The woman had flagged down officers to report the incident.

The injured woman gave officers a description of a female suspect. The video shows officers searching for a woman wearing maroon clothes and a tan hat. The officers searched the area and found a woman who matched the suspect description minutes later.

Encounter in the alley

Sgt. Zach Eaton, a Sacramento police spokesman, said an officer tried to stop the assault suspect. The video shows the suspect running away from the officer, who followed her in his vehicle down the alley, which ran homes, warehouses, a McDonald’s and a Sacramento Fire Department station. The officer used his loudspeaker, telling her to stop. The suspect refused to stop.

A second officer arrived in his vehicle at the opposite end of the alley. The video shows the officer get out of his patrol vehicle and order the woman to “Stop, stop right there.” The suspect continued to run in the direction of that officer.

Eaton said the suspect abruptly pulled out a knife and stabbed the officer on his left arm. He said the officer pushed the suspect to the ground as she stabbed him.

“She stabbed me,” the officer is heard yelling in the video.

Eaton said the suspect, who was on the ground, then turned toward the other officer and began to get to her feet with the knife still in her right hand. The other officer was approaching them from the other end of the alley.

The video shows the suspect had lifted her torso and was sitting on the ground holding knife with the blade pointed in an outward position when both officers fired their guns at her. The wounded officer was facing her when he discharged his weapon; the other officer was standing next to her, a few feet away, when he fired, as seen from footage given to the police by a property owner’s surveillance camera.

Several gunshots fired in a few seconds

Six gunshots can be heard in the video. Only a few seconds passed from when the officer was stabbed to when the officers shot the suspect.

Police said both officers fired shots at the suspect, hitting the woman multiple times in the front and back of her body. The video shows the woman rolled over onto her stomach as she was struck by gunfire.

The wounded officer applied a tourniquet to his injured arm to try to slow the bleeding. Police said other officers arrived in the alley and approached the suspect, removed the knife from under her and began providing emergency medical aid, including CPR.

The woman was later pronounced dead at the scene.

The wounded officer suffered a serious injury and underwent surgery that night. Police said the wounded officer was released from the hospital two days later and is still receiving medical care for the injury.

The Police Department’s Homicide Unit, Internal Affairs Division, Professional Standards Unit and Use of Force Investigation Team were investigating the incident. The Office of Public Safety Accountability, the city’s Inspector General and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office were overseeing the investigation.