By Brian Rokos
San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.
VICTORVILLE, Calif. — A San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy was injured Wednesday, Sept. 4, in Victorville, in a fight for her gun during which the firearm went off. Soon after, when deputies descended on the neighborhood, they shot the suspect as he held the deputy’s gun.
The injuries to the deputy, which did not come from gunfire, and the suspect were not considered life-threatening, the Sheriff’s Department said.
That incident, just after 8:30 a.m. in the 13000 block of Cabazon Court, was one of two deputy-involved shootings in Victorville on Wednesday.
The second shooting took place about 9:30 a.m. in the 15000 block of Heatherdale Road, and no deputies were injured, according to a sheriff’s Twitter message. No information on the condition of that suspect or the circumstances that led to the shooting was available early Wednesday evening.
The Cabazon Court confrontation began about 8:25 a.m. with a 911 call from a woman yelling “Oh my God, oh my God, send the police, I need my son removed from my home,” a sheriff’s news release said. The first deputy to arrive, Meagan Forsberg, contacted that man, identified by authorities as 21-year-old Ari Young, outside the home.
What the Sheriff’s Department said happened next was captured in a video that showed Forsberg fighting for her life. It opens with the suspect repeatedly punching Forsberg in the head and face, and Forsberg attempting to ward him off. Forsberg falls on her back, her right armed raised with her gun in the hand. A shot goes off as an unknown woman screams and a woman in a pink outfit walks by.
The suspect then holds down Forsberg’s arm with both hands. Another shot is fired, and the suspect takes the gun away. Forsberg gets up and quickly moves out of camera view to the right. The suspect stands up, extends his right arm and fires in the direction in which Forsberg fled. Young fired several shots at her, the release said.
The suspect then walks to his right, and as three sheriff’s SUVs roll up with sirens screaming, he puts his hands up with the deputy’s gun still in his right hand, pointing up. After that, his actions are obscured by the trees between the suspect and the person taping the video. The suspect ignored commands to drop the gun, the release said. About a dozen shots then ring out, according to the video, with the suspect falling after about the eighth round.
Forsberg and Young were hospitalized.
The shootings were unrelated, the Twitter message said.
©2019 the San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, Calif.)