Dashboard camera footage released by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department shows how close a group of officers came to being killed when they were ambushed by a man brandishing an automatic rifle.
Yet remarkably, neither the officers or the man attacking them was seriously injured in the confrontation.
According to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, officers were responding to a call of a possibly suicidal man armed with a gun in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., on the evening of April 27.
Shortly after the officers arrived they were ambushed by the suspect, who emerged from his garage carrying an automatic rifle.
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The man fired multiple shots at the officers, destroying the windshield of their police cruiser and peppering the car with bullets as the officers scrambled for cover.
According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the officers were unable to return fire “due to poor sight lines and concern that they couldn’t see who else may have been inside the garage.”
After firing “dozens” of rounds at the officers, the suspect dropped his weapon and was arrested without further incident by police.
“The deputies involved showed incredible restraint to take cover, not blindly shoot at the suspect while he was firing at them, and to respond safely and swiftly when the suspect surrendered,” the department wrote on its YouTube page. “We share this video to demonstrate the extremely dangerous and unpredictable job that our deputies encounter.”
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