Santa Ana police shoot, kill man during standoff

Santa Ana police fatally shot an armed man Wednesday after he had already shot himself during a standoff, authorities said.

It was the third officer-involved shooting in the city since Feb. 20.

Police opened fire on Benito Osorio, 39, in the 300 block of South Main Street after he got out of his white Toyota truck with a gun, said Santa Ana Police Department spokesman Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.

Video footage obtained by KCBS-TV showed officers fired at least eight bullets toward Osorio, a Santa Ana resident.

Officers “must have told him 20 times, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun, drop the gun.’ Then there was a shooting,” Bertagna said.

Police were initially called to the 800 block of South Cypress Avenue, about five blocks away, on reports of a shooting.

Amid a dispute regarding a woman who was not present, Osorio had fired several shots at another man, Bertagna said. None of the bullets hit the other man, who was not injured.

Police responding to the scene tracked down Osorio, who eventually pulled over his truck but refused to get out. During the standoff, police saw that he was armed and tried to talk to him.

“While seated in the car, he eventually shot himself under the chin,” Bertagna said. About 90 seconds later, he hopped out of the truck with the handgun and confronted officers.

Osorio was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It’s unclear how many officers fired or how many bullets struck him.

Wednesday’s officer-involved shooting is the third such incident in the last three weeks. On Feb. 27, police searching for a robbery suspect fatally shot a man. On Feb. 20, a 50-year-old man was shot and critically injured after allegedly stabbing a woman and then refusing to drop a knife after he was approached by an officer.

The shooting will be investigated by the Orange County district attorney’s office, as is customary in officer-involved shootings. The department will conduct a separate investigation into the shooting, Bertagna said.

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