A 26-year-old man fatally gunned down two people in downtown San Diego Wednesday morning and later wounded a Harbor Police officer in a shootout on the streets of Little Italy, police said.
The officer, a trainee who did not fire his gun, was shot in his hip and rushed to UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest. He is expected to survive.
The gunman was killed in the exchange of bullets with police.
The names of the officer and the suspected shooter were not released.
The incident unfolded just after 8:20 a.m., when police responded to a shooting on Union Street near West A Street. Officers found two gunshot victims — a 39-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman — inside a vehicle, police said.
Both victims died at the scene. Their names were not released.
Police fanned out downtown, launching a massive search for the gunman behind the double homicide while a helicopter circled overhead, broadcasting the suspect’s description.
Shortly after 9:05 a.m. — about 45 minutes after the deadly shooting — a witness who heard the description flagged down Harbor Police officers to report seeing a man standing behind an electrical box in Little Italy, about a mile from the initial shooting, San Diego police homicide Lt. Jud Campbell said.
San Diego police Capt. Manny Del Toro said a witness described the man as wearing “tactical boots, and armed with a gun.”
“From what the description (was), there was no attempt to hide. He was being very blatant and very aggressive, and shooting ensued immediately with the Harbor PD,” Del Toro said.
Del Toro said the man fired at four Harbor Police officers. Campbell said two of them returned fire.
After the suspect was hit, officers provided medical assistance and transported him to a hospital. He died there shortly after 10 a.m.
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Police said several vehicles and a building were hit by gunfire in the shootout, which occurred on the southwest corner of Kettner Boulevard and Juniper Street. A bullet hole was clearly visible in the window of a building. No other injuries were reported.
Police are still sorting out the relationship between the alleged gunman and the two homicide victims, but investigators believe the three knew each other. All three were San Diego residents.
“This was not a random attack. We do believe this was targeted,” Campbell said.
He said detectives were reviewing surveillance camera footage and going through witness statements at the two scenes. Investigators did not immediately know how the suspect made his way from the initial shooting scene to Little Italy.
Harbor Police Chief Magda Fernandez said the wounded officer has been with her agency for three months and is still in training. She said she spoke to him before he underwent surgery. “He was awake, he was alert, and he was in good spirits,” she said.
Fernandez said the incident “highlights the dangers our men and women in uniform face every day.”
“The actions of all officers on the scene saved lives today,” she said.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl, talking to reporters near the shootout scene, commended the Harbor Police officers.
“This is Little Italy. We have people walking the streets, coffee shops,” Wahl said. “Their ability to run toward gunfire and to courageously engage this individual I believe saved lives.”
Campbell said one homicide team was at the Union Street scene and another was in Little Italy looking into the second shooting.
“There are a lot of moving parts here,” he said. “Our goal is to know what happened and why.”
The lieutenant said the Harbor Police officers had body-worn cameras on during the shootout.
Police closed down several streets in Little Italy, blocking them off with yellow police tape, and said it would be several hours before investigators would reopen the streets.
San Diego police are investigating the homicide, as well as the shooting by Harbor Police under a countywide protocol designed to keep departments from investigating incidents involving their own officers.