By Caleb Lunetta
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — Body-worn camera footage released Thursday shows a San Diego police officer shoot — but miss — a driver as she allegedly attempted to flee from police and nearly struck him in northern San Diego last month.
San Diego police Sgt. Jeffrey Houchins fired and struck the front hood of a car being allegedly driven at him by 35-year-old Janet Hammel near San Dieguito Road and Derby Farms Road, in the North City neighborhood north of Carmel Valley, on May 6, investigators said.
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Hammel was not hit or injured, investigators said. She was later arrested on suspicion of evading police and assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, investigators said.
The edited video begins by saying that on the day of the shooting, San Diego police officers received a report of an occupied stolen vehicle around 11:05 a.m. on Tecolote Road near Morena Boulevard.
The video cuts to footage taken by the San Diego Police Department helicopter flying over a parked vehicle that it has honed in on.
Police said Hammel was in the car. The car backed up and began to drive away from the scene, and a pursuit began.
On Interstate 5 , the car drove at speeds exceeding 90 mph, and the driver refused to yield to the officers with their lights on behind her.
After taking several streets before heading east on San Dieguito Road, the pursuit was called off due to erratic driving and unsafe speeds, police said.
On Derby Farms Road near a gated community, Houchins and another officer deployed spike strips and stood in a grassy embankment waiting for the car to drive by again.
The video then cuts to body-worn camera footage and helicopter footage showing the car seemingly attempting to avoid the spike strip and driving up onto the embankment where the officers were standing.
The car drove between the two officers, and Houchins fired a single round from his service weapon, the video shows. The bullet did not strike the driver but hit the hood of the vehicle, according to police.
“I shot into the windshield,” Houchins said into his radio in the video. “She drove right at me.”
The car continued driving east until it reached Poway, where a set of spike strips popped the tires.
The woman was then arrested.
The Sheriff’s Office is handling the investigation under a reciprocal agreement with San Diego police, so neither department investigates its own officers or deputies in on-duty shootings.
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