Enter the Other Shooter

Jose Luis Valdes’ camcorder is usually stashed in a bedroom closet next to his suitcases, gathering dust.

But Sunday night, when a speeding Corvette crashed into a neighbor’s fence, Valdes and his seldom-used Sony were thrust into the national spotlight.

Valdes, who sells used cars in El Monte, ran outside and flicked on the record button just in time to capture a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy opening fire.

The man he shot was Air Force security officer Elio Carrion, who Valdes said had been sprawled on the ground and appeared to be trying to cooperate.

Since that night, snippets of Valdes’ grainy, dim recording have been broadcast nationwide and become a central piece of evidence in a case that now involves the FBI.

Valdes acknowledges that his amateur recording, the memory of which has kept him awake for the past three nights, will probably thrust him and his family into complex legal proceedings and the public eye.

“It’ll be a long hard time ahead,” Valdes said in Spanish. “I have two daughters, a wife, a job -- but I can’t not do this for the guy.”

Valdes said he was in bed when the incident began after 10 p.m. Sunday.

Luis Fernando Escobedo, 21, allegedly led the deputy on a short high-speed chase from Montclair to Chino, ending when Escobedo’s blue Corvette slammed into a brick wall across the street from Valdes’ two-story stucco home.

Carrion, who had just returned from duty in Iraq, was a passenger in the car.

Hearing the crash, the 38-year-old car salesman hopped out of bed, where he had been instant-messaging friends, to check out what had spooked his young daughter.

Valdes said he saw a deputy holding a gun next to the smashed Corvette, so Valdes rushed back inside to grab his Sony digital zoom camera.

Valdes said the decision to grab his camera “just came to me.”

“It was spontaneous,” he said.

Valdes shot the incident from his frontyard on the 5500 block of Francis Avenue as he, his partner and brother watched the drama unfold less than 100 feet away.

Valdes said the deputy ordered Carrion to the ground. Then, Valdes said, the deputy told Carrion to get up and opened fire on the airman when he moved.

“[Carrion] seemed like he was following directions, but the [deputy] just kept saying bad words,” Valdes said.

After firing his weapon, the deputy radioed in, and sirens began to wail, Valdes said.

Valdes said that with recording in hand, he went into his house and “got very nervous.”

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ Valdes said. “I was there a very long time.”

A friend urged Valdes to turn the tape over to the police, so that night he invited the swarm of detectives in the street inside his home to watch.

“When they saw the part where he got shot, they jumped, like everyone else has,” Valdes said.

Valdes turned over the original tape to authorities, making a copy on his DVD player. When he didn’t see the footage on early morning newscasts Monday, he began calling stations to offer the clip.

Sheriff’s officials said the shooting is under investigation, that Valdes’ video is being thoroughly reviewed and that all findings will be handed over to the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office.

Valdes released the recording to a KTLA-TV Channel 5 news reporter Monday. The station, which is owned by Los Angeles Times parent Tribune Co., paid $5,000 for exclusive rights to the footage, Valdes said. He said he wanted the tape to be shared with other news outlets, and for KTLA to donate the money to Carrion’s wife.

The public should see this, Valdes said.

“The enemy didn’t touch that guy” in Iraq, he said. “He was saved in Iraq only to be shot by one of his own.”

Valdes said the incident was a chilly reminder of his own youth in the Cuban military: After returning home to Havana after two years of fighting in Angola, he said, police severely beat him for visiting a prohibited store. Cuban officials could not be reached Wednesday to confirm or comment on Valdes’ allegations.

Valdes said he and his longtime partner, Grecy Duarte, immigrated to the United States by boat in April 1993, seeking political asylum.

“To see what I saw, I felt like I was there,” Valdes said of the altercation outside his home. “I felt like I was the guy; like I was 21 years old once again, that I had just come back from the war.

“I lived through that,” Valdes said. “The same thing happened to me in my country.”