For release on November 28, 2012
CONTACT:
Brian Welch
Supervising Deputy District Attorney
Homicide Unit
(408) 792-2624
LEGALLY JUSTIFIED: SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES SHOT CUPERTINO QUARRY KILLER
A prosecutorial review has determined that three Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies lawfully fired their weapons at armed fugitive, Shareef Allman, 49, of San Jose who had just shot nine co-workers – killing three of them – at the Lehigh Cement plant in Cupertino last year.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office investigates officer-involved shootings to determine if the force employed was lawful. By law, officers are allowed to use deadly force when there is a reasonable need to protect themselves from an apparent, imminent threat of death or great bodily injury. In this case, prosecutors concluded shots fired by deputies Fabian De Santiago, Christopher Hilt and Lindsay Crist were legally justified.
Discovered after a 26-hour manhunt following his violent, heavily-armed rampage, Allman, was struck numerous times by the deputies’ bullets. An autopsy determined that he died by his own hand, firing his semiautomatic handgun into his head when confronted by the deputies in the driveway of a Sunnyvale residence.
“Given the apparent danger that Allman posed, the deputies’ use of deadly force was not excessive or unreasonable in eliminating the perceived imminent threat,” it states in the 26-page District Attorney’s report released to the public today.
On the morning of October 5, 2011, Allman went to his workplace of 15 years, at Lehigh Southwest Cement Permanente, barricaded the exits of a trailer where there was an employee meeting, and began his deadly attack. Within minutes he shot nine co-workers. Three died. One survivor is paralyzed from the chest down. Allman fled and, after stashing two weapons and a bag of bullets in various locations, shot a woman in the parking lot of Hewlett Packard and tried to take her car. A co-worker scared him away, but not before Allman shot at her through her car window.
The next morning during a manhunt in a Sunnyvale neighborhood near the attempted carjacking, Deputy De Santiago saw Allman crouching behind a car. Quickly confronted by De Santiago and the two other deputies, an armed Allman did not comply with orders and said “Kill me!” and/or “I just want to kill myself!” When he made a threatening gesture with the gun, the deputies opened fire. They struck him eight times. An autopsy showed that Allman used his gun to fire the fatal head wound. In his pockets investigators found 34 unfired ammunition rounds.