By Crystal Carreon
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A man fitting the description of a suspect who had just robbed a south Sacramento bank -- right down to his rolling suitcase -- was shot to death early Thursday after he attacked a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy with an aluminum baseball bat, authorities said.
The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office identified the man shot as Huy Tuong Le, 33, of Sacramento. A law-enforcement alert broadcast after the bank robbery described him as having a bat and a rolling suitcase, said sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Curran, a department spokesman.
The bulletin followed the 9:25 a.m. robbery at the Washington Mutual bank on West Stockton Boulevard, where the robber had threatened a bank teller with the bat before fleeing with cash, Curran said. No injuries were reported at the bank.
About five minutes later, a deputy spotted the man walking along Alpine Frost Drive, just west of Bruceville Road and ordered him to stop. At that point the man ran toward the deputy, who had stepped out of his patrol car, and struck him in the arm with the aluminum bat, Curran said.
“When he drew the bat back again to hit him a second time, that’s when the deputy drew his weapon,” Curran said.
Witnesses told responding deputies they heard one to two shots.
The man was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died minutes after 11 a.m. The deputy was also taken to a hospital for treatment of a minor injury to his arm, Curran said. The shooting has left the six-year veteran of the department “obviously shaken,” Curran said.
Curran withheld the name of the deputy involved, pending an investigation of the fatal shooting by the Sacramento Police Department. Thursday’s death marks the second fatal shooting to involve a sheriff’s deputy in the past two weeks. On July 24, a deputy shot and killed an Elverta man who had apparently threatened the deputy with two kitchen knives.
“It’s just an eye-opening chain of events,” Curran told The Bee. “Every officer has to come to the realization that this is what they could face every day.”
Copyright 2007 The Sacramento Bee