Officer Shoots Man to Death in His Home

A police officer shot and killed a Huntington Beach man in his home Thursday when the man appeared at his door with a gun, police said.

David Eric Myers, 25, of Huntington Beach was killed about 1:45 a.m. when officers responded for the second time in 20 minutes to reports of a disturbance at his home in the 9800 block of Jamaica Circle, Lt. Ed McErlain said.

The first report occurred about 1:25 a.m. and involved a complaint about a loud stereo. Officers went to the home and asked the residents to turn the stereo down. The occupants, including Myers and at least one other man and a woman, agreed to turn it off, McErlain said.

“The officers left the location but remained in the nearby vicinity. Then they heard what they thought to be glass breaking coming from that same residence,” McErlain said. “While investigating the noise, officers were contacted by a neighbor who asked to file a complaint about the noise.”

The officers then heard yelling and screaming coming from the house, he said.

Neighbors Heard Shots

“Officers returned to the front door of the residence, where they were met by (Myers) armed with a revolver,” McErlain said.

It was at that point that Myers was shot in the doorway, but McErlain would not say whether Myers fired or how many shots the officer fired. He said the department could not release the officer’s name.

Neighbors in the 291-home Villa Pacific tract said they heard as many as three to five shots, but did not know who had fired them.

Connie Freed, who lives two doors from Myers, said she heard at least three gunshots shortly before 2 a.m. Since Myers moved into the townhouse about a year ago, she said, he and a neighbor had argued several times about Myers’ stereo.

“He had a big elaborate stereo on the right side of his house, right next to (the neighbor’s) wall,” Freed said.

When the neighbor asked him a few times to turn it down, he moved it to the other side of the house, she said.

“But he still kept playing it really loud. We couldn’t really hear it here, except for the bass every once in a while,” she said.

The neighbor “called the police a couple of times. She knew he had a gun and she was scared. After she called the police one time, he yelled over the fence, ‘This is war,’ and turned up the volume.”

Other neighbors said they had heard loud arguing coming from Myers’ home earlier in the week.

McErlain said Huntington Beach officers had been called to Myers’ home Tuesday evening for a disturbance call, and on several other occasions for “similar disturbance calls.” He would not elaborate on the type of disturbances.

As with all officer-involved shootings, the Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating.