Police Officer Shoots, Kills Homeless Man

A homeless man, surrounded by his sleeping bag and other possessions concealed among a row of bushes outside a doughnut store, was shot and killed by a police officer Monday afternoon.

The man, who was identified as Roberto Duarte, 58, was shot by an officer on bicycle patrol about 3:15 p.m. and was pronounced dead at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana.

Police Sgt. Jack Rife said two officers on bicycles approached the Donut Star at 404 N. Grand Ave. after seeing “two male adults . . . engaged in what they believed to be criminal activity.”

Rife said he did not know what the officers were investigating.

Police Chief Paul M. Walters said the Orange County district attorney’s office is conducting an investigation, a standard procedure when a police officer is involved in a fatal shooting.

“We don’t release anything until they (district attorney’s investigators) have completed their investigation. They are just starting their interviews,” Walters said.

Eyewitnesses--including one man who said he was five feet away from Duarte when he was shot--claimed in an interview Monday night that Duarte wasn’t armed. They described him as being 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighing just more than 100 pounds.

“I was sitting there changing my shoes. The next thing I knew, they shot him,” said Ron, a homeless man who declined to give his last name. “They (police) said he tried to grab the gun.”

Ari Leiter, 51, said he was about 30 feet away from Duarte at the time of the shooting. He too said that Duarte wasn’t armed but speculated that he may have tried to stand up when he heard the officers shout “police.”

Leiter said Duarte was addicted to cocaine and heroin and said police may have seen him shooting up or mixing drugs.

“It was coldblooded murder. There was no reason to shoot a hype (drug addict),” Leiter said. “Any officer knows an addict is going to be nervous.”

Duarte was a familiar face at the convenience store, pizza parlor and doughnut shop that mark the corner of Grand Avenue and 4th Street.

To the homeless and prostitutes in the area, he was known as “Papa” because of his age and fatherly advice.

“He was like a father to everybody,” Leiter said.

Leiter and several other witnesses said they first saw the two Santa Ana officers come across the Donut Star parking lot on bicycles, which they stowed inside the store.

Then, the witnesses claim, the officers looked through the store’s window in order to observe Duarte.

Minutes later, the witnesses said, the officers made their way through the bushes and a shot was heard seconds later.

Leiter and others said that Duarte was shot in the chest and that the officers looked “shocked.”

“This guy (the police officer) he panicked,” said Will Wright, 54, a homeless man who said he witnessed the shooting. “For him to pull his weapon and shoot that man--what kind of criminal activity could have been going on?”

Wright said he had been friends with Duarte for more than a decade.