Yuba City police release video of officers shooting a nude man swinging a shovel

The Yuba City Police Department on Friday released video of two of its officers shooting a shovel-wielding man who was nude and roaming through a residential neighborhood last month.

Guillermo Figueroa, 31, of Yuba City, was wounded in the shooting and remained in critical but stable condition Friday, the department said in a news release. He had been hospitalized since the Feb. 26 shooting.

Officers Emilio Campos and Christopher Doble were involved in the shooting and were not seriously injured while attempting to subdue Figueroa, police said.

The department released an edited video narrated by Police Chief Jim Runyen. It includes body-worn camera footage, along with video from nearby security cameras and a home doorbell camera. Recordings of 911 calls were also included.

The incident last month was initially reported about 9:15 a.m. in the 2000 block of Wild River Drive in the neighborhood just west of the Feather River and several blocks east of Highway 99 in Yuba City.

Runyen said several 911 callers reported a man, later identified as Figueroa, was naked, behaving erratically and running through the street.

Man rammed front door

One 911 caller reported his front door had been damaged, telling the dispatcher that he saw Figueroa ram his body into the closed front door. Doorbell camera video from that home shows Figueroa ramming his head and body into the front door three times before running away from the home.

The two officers found Figueroa in the neighborhood and ran after him, chasing Figueroa to the front yard of a home in the 1800 block of Rapid Falls Drive. The police chief said Figueroa initially surrendered to the officers in the front yard after the short chase.

The body-worn camera video shows Figueroa went to the ground, face-down in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, as the officers approached him to take him into custody.

“I believe in Jesus. I’m a believer. Jesus Christ,” Figueroa is heard saying as he was face-down and the officers told him to put his hands behind his back.

One of the officers placed a handcuff on Figueroa’s left wrist when Figueroa turned and began resisting, the video shows. Officers used less-than-lethal Taser guns, but Figueroa stood and walked toward them. Officers repeatedly ordered him to get on the ground as they backed away to maintain distance.

The video shows officers used Tasers again and struck him with batons, but Runyen in the video said both were ineffective.

Shovel swung multiple times

Figueroa is then seen in the video breaking the top half of a portion of a wood fence, before he leaned his body over the broken fence and into the home’s backyard.

The video shows the officers made their way into the backyard through the same broken fence and repeatedly ordered Figueroa to “roll over” as the man was seated on the grounded and resisting the officers.

Moments later, Figueroa is seen in the video get back on his feet and grab a shovel from the home and swung it multiple times at one of the officers, who was pinned against the fence. That’s when the police shooting occurred. At least two gunshots are heard in the video, and Figueroa is seen falling to the ground.

The video shows Figueroa continued resisting after being shot. Officers eventually handcuffed him. Additional officers arrived and are seen providing medical aid, including chest compressions, before medics arrived.

The shooting remains under investigation by the Yuba-Sutter Regional Officer-Involved Shooting Team, the Sutter County District Attorney’s Office and the department’s Professional Standards Unit.