Shooting Inquiry to Ask If Officer Thought Man Had Gun

The investigation into the shooting death of an unarmed robbery suspect will try to determine whether the officer who fired the fatal shot believed the suspect was armed, Orange Police Sgt. Art Romo said Thursday.

Ernest Henry Nunez, 31, of Orange was fatally shot Tuesday night by a Santa Ana policeman as Nunez’s wife and three young children watched in horror.

The crime Nunez was suspected of committing--a Sept. 5 robbery of an children’s clothing store--originally was reported as an armed robbery, Romo said. It was Nunez’s wife, Rosie, the store manager, who reported the crime.

Rosie Nunez conceded Thursday in a telephone interview that she “was shook up and upset” when she first reported the crime to police, falsely telling them that she did not know the man who held her up.

Later the same day, she said, she changed her story to police, explaining that it had been her husband, Ernest, who took $3,000 from the Kids’ Mart on Chapman Avenue in Orange.

She said Thursday she was uncertain whether she initially reported the crime as an armed robbery.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “They (police) are going to say that as long as there’s a policeman involved . . . and they are going to try to cover up for him.”

Romo was more certain of what Rosie Nunez said.

“Originally when she (Rosie Nunez) reported the robbery, she said the suspect was armed with a handgun in the waistband,” Romo said Thursday.

A source within the Santa Ana Police Department said that the officer, whose name has not been released, shot the fleeing Nunez in the back because he had seen Nunez’s hands “in his waistband.”

The officer feared that Nunez would pull a gun and fire, according to a source who asked not to be identified.

Santa Ana police policy permits the use of deadly force when “there is fear of death or serious bodily injury to the officer, another officer or a citizen or a bystander.”

With a shroud of secrecy over the investigation, it was unknown Thursday whether police in pursuit of Nunez--two weeks after the robbery--believed him to be an armed robbery suspect, or simply a robbery suspect.

Nunez has said there was no reason for police to shoot her fleeing husband. She also denied that her husband had made any move to his waistband while fleeing or that he ever owned or used a weapon.

However, according to Seth Kelsey, the attorney who represents the patrolman, the officer “had information that he (Nunez) was armed. He (the officer) had reasonable basis to believe that his life was in jeopardy.”

When pursuing armed suspects police are more cautious than with unarmed suspects regarding the safety of themselves and bystanders, Romo said.

“It’s likely there’s going to be an extra level of caution when approaching a suspect believed to be armed,” Kelsey said. “That doesn’t mean there is going to be a heightened propensity of discharging an officer’s weapon. It just means there’s an increased awareness of the possibility of violence occurring initiated by the suspect. . . . So the officer has to be prepared to respond to that possibility.”

Based on the Santa Ana patrol officer’s statements to district attorney’s investigators, “the officer had reasonable basis to believe that the victim was armed at the time the officer decided to shoot,” Kelsey said.

On Tuesday night, undercover Orange police investigators in an unmarked car followed Nunez, his wife, and their three children as the family drove into Santa Ana. Once in that city, the Orange officers requested assistance from Santa Ana police for “a felony car stop,” a Santa Ana police spokesman said.

When Rosie Nunez pulled the car to the curb in the 3700 block of Camille Street, her husband jumped out and tried to run away. When he refused to stop when ordered to, he was shot once with shotgun pellets in the back and the head.

Santa Ana police have declined to say why the patrolman fired at the back of the unarmed suspect.

The joint district attorney-Santa Ana police investigation of the shooting will include a review of Rosie Nunez’s original crime report on the Sept. 5 robbery, as well as the tape recordings of the Orange police officers’ call for assistance in pulling over the Nunezes’ vehicle, Romo said.

“I can . . . say with some sort of degree of certainty that the request was made by a phone or on the airwaves where we are going to have a recording to verify exactly what was said,” he said.

Bryan Brown, who heads the Orange County district attorney’s homicide unit, declined to comment on the details of the case while the investigation continues. Meanwhile, the Santa Ana patrol officer who fired the fatal shot remains on paid administrative leave.

Nunez was the second person shot to death by a Santa Ana police officer this year and the sixth police shooting in the city. There have been 24 officer-involved shootings so far this year in Orange County, 10 of them fatal. Last year there were 20 such shootings, 10 of them fatal.

Ernest Nunez had five drug or burglary convictions in Orange County dating to 1977.