Logan Heights Shoot-Out Hurts Officer, His Assailant

A San Diego police officer and a man he was about to search were wounded Monday morning in Logan Heights when the officer returned gunfire from the man, police said.

Officer Dennis Davis, 26, was wounded in the upper right thigh. He was treated at Mercy Hospital and released.

The man, who has not been identified, was in surgery to repair spinal cord damage for almost seven hours at UCSD Medical Center. He was transferred to the intensive-care unit Monday afternoon in critical condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. It was unclear how many times he had been shot in the back, she said.

San Diego Police Department spokesman Dave Cohen gave this account of the shooting:

Davis was patrolling the area when he was waved down by a delivery person, who said “some guy was waving a stick in a threatening manner outside a business in the area.” After driving a short distance, Davis approached a man fitting the description at 31st Street and National Avenue.

“Davis tried to get him to put his hands on the hood of the (patrol) car so he could do a search.” But as the man started to put his hands on the hood, “he suddenly reached into his waistband, spun to his right along the length of the patrol car, and, as he did so, he cocked a weapon and fired a shot.”

The shot missed Davis, but a second round hit the officer.

“The gunman backed up as the officer returned fire. As the guy was running, the officer was firing at him, probably five to seven shots. The guy gets hit at least once and goes down.”

Davis then radioed for help, handcuffed the fallen man and found a gun on the sidewalk, about 15 feet away.

The initial shots between the men were fired at close range, “just a matter of several feet,” Cohen said, adding that the man fell about 30 feet from the car.

Cohen described the man’s gun as a “large-caliber automatic weapon.”

There is no evidence that the man was the one Davis was originally seeking, and no stick was found in the area, Cohen said.

It was the second on-duty shooting for Davis, Cohen said. On Sept. 25, Davis wounded a man who had reportedly struck him with a car. The district attorney’s office, which reports on all officer-involved shootings, announced Jan. 10 that Davis was justified in using deadly force in that incident, which occurred in the same area as Monday’s shooting.