Demonstrators stormed a police department in Orange County California on Sunday to protest an officer-involved shooting that left an unarmed man dead and led to a violent clash between witnesses and police.
Welter said two officers were placed on paid leave after one of them fatally shot 24-year-old Manuel Diaz.
He said the officers approached three men in an alleyway when they ran away. One of the officers chased Diaz to the front of an apartment complex where the shooting occurred.
The shooting sparked a melee in the neighborhood as some threw rocks and bottles at officers who were securing the scene for investigators to collect evidence. Sgt. Bob Dunn, the department's spokesman, said that as officers detained an instigator, the crowd advanced on officers so they fired bean bags and pepper balls at them.
Video captured by a KCAL-TV crew showed a chaotic scene as some people ducked to the ground and others scattered screaming. A man is seen yelling at an officer even as a weapon is pointed at him; two adults huddled to shield a boy and girl. Meanwhile, a police dog charged at several people sitting on the grass, including a woman and a child in a stroller, before biting a man in the arm.
Dunn said the dog accidentally got out of a patrol car. He said he didn't know whether police warned the crowd to disperse before firing the rubber bullets and pepper balls.
Crystal Ventura, a 17-year-old who witnessed the shooting, told the Register that the man had his back to the officer. Ventura said the man was shot in the buttocks area. The man then went down on his knees, she said, adding that he was struck by another bullet in the head. Ventura said another officer handcuffed the man, who by then was on the ground and not moving.
"They searched his pockets, and there was a hole in his head, and I saw blood on his face," Ventura told the newspaper.
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