Suspect Shot by Police Is on Life-Support System

A Redlands man shot by a Garden Grove police sharpshooter Saturday during a hostage standoff remained in “extremely critical condition” and on life-support systems late Sunday.

Michael J . Wright, 32, was shot in the head after he allegedly pistol-whipped his sister-in-law, wounded his estranged wife and took her and their 18-month-old daughter hostage at a home on Spinnaker Street. More than a dozen people in the quiet, well-kept neighborhood were evacuated as police officers moved in.

Wright remained in the intensive care ward Sunday at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where a nursing supervisor said he was breathing with the help of a ventilator.

He will be formally charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon “when he’s recovered from his injuries,” according to Garden Grove Police Lt. Ken Whitman.

Recuperating Sunday from the incident, Wright’s family declined to discuss the events. “I’d really rather not go into it,” said Wright’s wife, Beverly, 32, who was shot twice in the chest and remained hospitalized in stable condition at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center.

Wright’s sister-in-law, Carole Ann Huffer, 34, who was treated Saturday for head injuries, also declined to talk. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt Sunday, she came to the door of the yellow stucco home on Spinnaker where the incident began but refused to discuss it. “It’s family business,” she said.

According to reports from Huffer’s neighbors and Garden Grove police, Wright stormed into Huffer’s home Saturday with a gun, hit her, then herded his wife and daughter, Shannon, into the garden and threatened to kill them.

Next-door neighbor Joe Solis said that shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday he heard the staccato noise of a dozen gunshots, then a baby crying and two people arguing.

He said that when he peered over the trellis into the Huffers’ yard, he saw a woman, her head bleeding, pleading, “ ‘Don’t point the gun at me. Stop it! Stop it!’ Stop pointing the gun at me!’ ” Solis said.

Minutes earlier, Garden Grove police had received a call from a woman who said that a man with a weapon was trying to force his way into her house. As dispatchers remained on the line, they heard the sounds of a fight and “possible gunshots,” Whitman said.

By the time officers arrived, Wright had allegedly struck Huffer on the head several times, then taken his wife and daughter at gunpoint to the back yard. Both Wright’s wife and daughter appeared to be injured when police arrived, Whitman said.

He said officers surrounded the home and tried to persuade Wright to drop his gun but he continued to hold a rifle to his wife’s head, refusing to release her and “threatening to kill both his wife and child.”

As SWAT team members arrived, Whitman said, “it became apparent that Wright was not going to let them go and he was going to kill them and anyone who came into the rear yard.”

A police sharpshooter waited for the right time, then shot Wright in the head. Other officers rushed into the yard, took Wright into custody and rushed his wife and daughter to waiting paramedics.

“I heard a pop,” said one of Huffer’s neighbors, Paul Tran. “Then I saw the SWAT members charge to the house and a policeman came running out of the house with a baby in his arms.” Wright lay motionless on a gurney when he was brought out, Tran said, but his wife walked to the paramedics. Mrs. Wright was hospitalized; Shannon was treated for a cut on the head and later released.

According to Whitman, officers recovered “several semi-automatic weapons” from the Spinnaker Street home and Wright’s car.

Officers are continuing their investigation into the incident, Whitman said. And because Wright was shot by an officer, a special team from the Orange County district attorney’s office has begun an independent investigation.

Police officers and several neighbors said Sunday that they did not know what triggered the incident. But Solis said he believed Wright and his wife had been fighting over child custody and visitation.

Meanwhile on Spinnaker Street, it was just another lazy summer Sunday. Small children rode their bicycles down tree-shaded sidewalks, and from one end of the street came the deep hum of a lawn mower.

Except for the white chalk marks on the Huffer driveway--markings to designate a police investigation--there was no clue of the violence that had occurred there.

But residents who heard gunshots Saturday were still shocked.

“This is a nice quiet neighborhood, very nice,” said Tran, who has lived on Spinnaker Street for a year. “I hear on the news that people do things like this. But here--across the street--it’s scary.”