Questions Emerge in Police Shooting

A day after a Huntington Beach police officer fatally shot an 18-year-old farm worker, investigators tried to unravel the chain of events that led to the shooting--including whether the dead man brandished a firearm or a toy.

Huntington Beach police initially said Antonio Saldivar pointed a rifle at officers about 1:40 a.m. Saturday, moments before one of the officers opened fire. But they declined Sunday to identify the weapon or say whether it was real.

“We are not confirming whether it was a toy gun,” Lt. Chuck Thomas said Sunday about published reports that police confiscated a neighbor’s son’s toy rifle at the scene.

Saldivar was shot after a brief foot chase that began in the 17100 block of Ash Street, less than a mile from his apartment, police said.

Investigators said Saturday that two officers spotted Saldivar clad in dark clothes peering into a parked car. Saldivar ran, and when “the officers were able to catch up to the subject they saw he was armed with a rifle. The subject pointed the rifle at one of the officers.”

Sunday, Thomas described it only as “20 inches long, with a blue steel barrel and wooden stock.”

Sgt. Steve Doan, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating the shooting, also declined to comment Sunday. Police departments routinely refer shooting investigations involving their officers to other agencies to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Saturday’s incident was the third fatal shooting by Huntington Beach police officers since January 1999, Thomas said.

Thomas also declined to identify the officer who shot Saldivar, citing department policy and “personal reasons for the officer’s sake.”

Saldivar’s family and friends gathered Sunday at the two-bedroom apartment he shared with six relatives. They described him as an affable, quiet young man who had no criminal history. They said he dropped out of Westminster High School recently to work in strawberry fields in Tustin.

“He’s never given us any trouble,” his aunt Maricruz Huertero said. “Most of the time he would watch TV or baby-sit the children. He wanted a simple life. He wanted to get married and have children.”

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Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this story.