Suspect steals officer’s gun before being shot to death
By Matthew Rodriguez
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California (KCAL) — Newly released body camera footage from the Fountain Valley Police Department shows the tense moments after a suspect managed to wrestle an officer’s gun away.
Police officers were initially called to the 17400 block of Los Jardines West after someone tried to break into a woman’s car while she was parked outside Kazuo Masuda Middle School on January 24, according to the Fountain Valley PD.
One of the officers eventually found suspect Osean McClintock, 26, near a drive-thru ATM roughly a block from Fountain Valley’s police station. After a brief conversation with him, the officer tried to detain the shirtless McClintock, but he ran away. The officer chased McClintock through a nearby parking lot outside the Fountain Valley School District office but gave up and told his partner over the radio, “If he tries to run again, just let him go.”
Seconds later, he hears his partner shouting from a parking lot entrance at San Mateo Street and El Corazon Avenue intersection and sprints to help her.
The female officer’s bodycam shows McClintock running toward her open driver’s side door. While there is no audio, the video shows her pulling out her handgun before McClintock wrestles it away from her. During the struggle, the officer is thrown to the ground but quickly gets up and runs for cover, right as her partner arrives.
“He did grab the weapon from her but I know that my brother was not someone to hurt anyone,” sister Seajay McClintock said. He’s never hurt anyone in his life.”
Her partner orders McClintock to drop the handgun, but he refuses and enters his partner’s cruiser. The officer unleashed two volleys of fire and killed McClintock while he sat in the driver’s seat.
Seajay believed her brother was scared and trying to leave the officer’s sight before he was killed.
“I believe he was simply just trying to leave the officer’s sight and he was very scared at teh moment as anyone would be if you had a gun on you,” she said.
McClintock’s family claimed the officers put themselves in a dangerous situation and don’t understand why police killed the 26-year-old.
“They put themselves in a very dangerous situation,” Seajay said. “They put the public in danger by drawing out their weapons, and unfortunately, it cost my brother’s life.”
She said her brother suffered from a blood disorder that could cause disorientation.
“He did have a blood disorder and sometimes he would get brain bleeds,” Seajay said. “When he would get these brain bleeds, sometimes, it would make him very disoriented, confused and he would think that people were trying to hurt him.”
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