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Suspect Who Shot Two Officers In Shootout Killed After House He Barricaded Himself In Catches Fire

By Janice Malcolm
Published on: 07:22 PST, Jun 2, 2016

A man who authorities suspected of shooting two Fremont, California, police officers early Thursday morning was found dead when the home he had barricaded himself in during a standoff with a SWAT team caught fire and burned to the ground. The man had been barricaded in the residential neighborhood home for hours.

The suspect was tracked down by deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office to the home in Fremont and began to engage with the armed man at about 2 a.m. this morning. However, the man refused to surrender, and the police were forced to fire canisters of tear gas into the house to try and get him out. It is believed that the effort to smoke him out with the tear gas is what sparked the massive fire, but even as the house began to blaze, the suspect did not come out.

A Fremont police spokeswoman, Geneva Bosques, confirmed that the suspect had been found dead inside a closet in the burned home just after 8 a.m., but the cause of death is currently unclear. The possibility exists that he could have died either due to the fire or as a result of injuries sustained during the shootout with the police officers on Wednesday.

“We do have reason to believe he was injured yesterday… We don’t know whether he was already deceased prior to the fire.”

KRON4 News reported that firefighters were able to put out the blaze before police entered the house and found the gunman’s body inside. The fire department did not enter the home while they battled the fire. At one point, though, they had to back off and simply allow the fire to burn itself down. It was not until about 7:30 a.m. that they seemed to get the upper hand on the fire, and this was after it had been blazing for about five hours.

There was reportedly no one in that home when the suspect broke in and barricaded himself inside. According to the San Francisco Gate, the police made contact by cell phone with the suspect and attempted to negotiate with him before the fire started. In fact, they brought members of his family to the scene to try and talk to him as well but to no avail. Their last contact with the armed man was at approximately 3:30 a.m., and this is when they decided to fire the canisters of tear gas into the house to smoke him out.

The incident began on Wednesday afternoon, when the suspect shot two of the Fremont Police Department officers during a traffic stop that turned violent. After the suspect first shot the officer who had stopped him for not having front licence plates, he backed into the patrol car and sprayed it with bullets, hitting the officer once during the shootout. He then fled on foot and encountered a Fremont detective about 10 minutes later, and during that shootout, the 10-year veteran of the force was shot twice.

The identities of the officers have not been released, but they were both rushed to Regional Medical Center in San Jose. The first officer shot was reported to be in critical condition after surgery.

The suspect fled both scenes, but surveillance videos were used to track him, prompting a manhunt that involved officers conducting a house-to-house search that lasted well into the night. Hundreds of officers, some with police dogs from various law enforcement agencies around the East Bay, as well as the FBI fanned out across the neighborhood where the house later caught fire.

Residents within a radius of a mile from the search point received what Bosques said was a “Code Red” phone message, which urged them to stay indoors and call 911 to report any activity that seemed suspicious.

[Image via KelvinW/Shutterstock]

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