Escondido Officers’ Body Cam Footage Shows Exchange with Parolee Before Encounter Turns Deadly
By: The deadly shootout began shortly after 6:30 a.m. Nov. 3, when a resident of the Eastwood Meadows Mobile Home park on East Valley Parkway reported that a stranger in a sleeping bag was on her porch, Escondido police said.
Following a brief argument with the woman, the trespasser, later identified as Douglas Quinn, 48, of Indiana, walked over to a nearby parked motorcycle and began pushing it through the complex.
Escondido Officers Anthony Lay and Michael Statti arrived a short time later. With their uniform-worn cameras activated, they made contact with Quinn, standing beside the motorcycle. The man told them he had gone to the park in search of a friend.
“If you wouldn’t mind just keeping your hands where we can see them, you know, we’re weird about things like that,” Statti warned Quinn as he fussed over the seat of his motorcycle.
In response to questions from a chatty Statti, Quinn said he had ridden his motorcycle from the Midwest to the San Diego region in search of work. He also said he had spent about 20 years in prison and admitted that he was the subject of a parole-violation warrant issued in his home state.
Minutes later, when Statti told Quinn the officers were “just gonna, you know, place you in cuffs,” the suspect mumbled and began to bolt to the right, while reaching behind him. “Don’t you touch it,” the officer, who had been congenial, warned him.
But Quinn immediately pulled a handgun from his waistband and pointed it across his body at the officers, firing several rounds while running away.
Lay and Statti returned fire, and Quinn collapsed into a hedge alongside a perimeter wall. While on the ground, Quinn turned toward the officers, still holding the gun, prompting one of the officers to fire more shots.
After backup officers arrived, police sent a service dog to check on Quinn. When he remained motionless, the personnel moved in and performed CPR, to no avail. Paramedics then took him to a hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.