Local News in Brief : Costa Mesa : D.A. Clears 2 Officers in Shooting Death
The district attorney’s office said Friday that two Costa Mesa police officers were justified in the fatal shooting of a man who pointed a pellet gun at them Dec. 12.
The police officers went to Don Raymond Parker’s home in the 1800 block of Wallace Avenue after a neighbor had complained of a disturbance.
When the officers knocked on the door, Parker, 49, opened it and pointed a gun at the officers, according to police reports. The officers ordered Parker to drop the gun, and when he did not, they both fired at him, the police reports said.
Parker was taken to Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach where he was pronounced dead.
After reviewing the incident, the district attorney’s office Wednesday gave Police Chief David Snowden a letter saying the shooting was “justifiable homicide.”
Friends and neighbors of Parker described him as a “lonely, disturbed man” who had suffered from cancer and exhibited increasingly violent and threatening behavior in recent years.
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