San Diego police view body-camera footage in officer killing
SAN DIEGO — Investigators viewed body-camera footage to learn how one San Diego police officer was killed and another seriously injured in a gunbattle during a traffic stop. But the city’s police chief said that she has yet to determine if the shooting was similar to targeted, premeditated attacks on police in other parts of the country.
Chief Shelley Zimmerman and Mayor Kevin Faulconer visited briefly with the wounded officer, 32-year-old Wade Irwin, at the hospital on Saturday morning, but investigators were still unable to interview him after surgery. Zimmerman reiterated that Irwin was expected to fully recover, and Faulconer said the nine-year veteran of the force “looked good, all things considered.”
Zimmerman didn’t say what the police body camera footage showed and declined to comment on other aspects of the investigation, saying lots of ballistics, forensics and other evidence had to be processed. She stopped short of tying the shooting to killings of officers this month in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which have put police departments on high alert across the country.
“Until more information becomes available, we’re not going to tie it to anything else,” Zimmerman said at a news conference at UC San Diego Medical Center, where Irwin is recovering. “I want to be clear. We’re not making any correlation. We just don’t know yet.”