By Pablo Lopez and Louis Galvan
McClatchy Newspapers
Related: Teen attacks Calif. officer with bat, fatally shot
FRESNO, Calif. — A high school sophomore who attacked an police officer with a sawed-off bat on Wednesday wanted to die, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said Thursday.
“This was a case of suicide by cop,” Dyer said.
Jesus “Jesse” Carrizales, 17, had been “lying in wait” for Officer Junus Perry outside Perry’s office on the Roosevelt High School campus on Wednesday and attacked the officer without provocation, Dyer said in a news conference.
After Perry shot Carrizales in the chest, Dyer said, the teen told Perry: “Go ahead and kill me.”
But Carrizales’ family on Thursday said he was not suicidal and had been responding well to antidepressant medications that he began taking in January.
“My son was fine when he left for school in the morning,” the teen’s father, Margarito Carrizales, said in Spanish at the family’s southeast Fresno home. “Hours later we are told he is dead. I don’t understand.”
A day after the shooting, psychologists were at Roosevelt to speak with students, and police provided extra patrols. Classes were held as usual, although absences were up.
“We are proud of how our students and staff handled the situation yesterday,” said acting superintendent Ruth Quinto. She appeared by Dyer’s side at a news conference at police headquarters.
Dyer gave new details of the attack and said Perry had a stun gun. But Dyer said Perry feared for his life and had no choice but to use deadly force.
The chief couldn’t explain why the boy wanted to die.
Perry had been assigned to the Roosevelt campus for three years. He and Carrizales had not had a previous confrontation, Dyer said.
On Wednesday, Carrizales — 220 pounds and 6 feet 2 inches tall — snuck up behind Perry and struck him in the head with a sawed-off baseball bat, Dyer said.
As Perry lay on the pavement, according to Dyer, Carrizales told the officer: “What are you going to do now?”
Dazed and bloody, Perry scooted away on his elbows and knees. His radio had fallen to the ground, so he called out for help.
Perry pulled out his service gun from a hip holster, Dyer said, but the bullet clip fell out.
With Carrizales standing over Perry — and poised to strike again — the officer grabbed a pistol from his ankle holster, aimed it, and shot Carrizales once in the chest, Dyer said.
Carrizales fell backwards. His last words were: “Go ahead and kill me.” He repeated the phrase several times before dying at the scene.
While sitting in an ambulance, Perry told Dyer what happened.
“Chief, I had no other choice,” Perry said before he went to Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno for stitches to close a 2-inch gash on the right side of his head.
Carrizales’s body was left on the campus for several hours while detectives investigated. Officers found a 9-inch knife in his pants pocket, as well as a backpack that Dyer said the boy could have used to carry the weapon on campus.
Though Perry could have used his department-issued Taser to immobilize Carrizales, Dyer said officers are trained “to stop the threat.”
Dyer credited “God’s protective hand” — and Perry’s quick action — with saving Perry’s life. If Carrizales had won the battle, Dyer said, the teen could have taken Perry’s two guns and caused “further tragedy.”
Calling Perry a hero, Dyer said the officer also “will have to live with that pain (from killing someone) for the rest of his life.”
Perry is on paid administrative leave while police investigate. At his home, Perry — with the right side of his head still bandaged — declined to comment, closing the door without saying a word.
Detectives have interviewed more than 140 students and staff, but only a few saw the confrontation, Dyer said.
On Thursday, eight officers were assigned to patrol the Roosevelt campus, and another eight were posted outside the campus. The same police presence will be there Friday, as well as a contingent of school psychologists.
About 75 students spoke to psychologists Thursday, district spokeswoman Susan Bedi said. Students and staff also brought flowers to the site where Carrizales was shot.
At the news conference, Quinto said an automated telephone system was used to notify all parents in the district of the shooting, and a lockdown that followed. Roosevelt parents received a second message giving them an update, she said.
Quinto and Dyer said the law prevented them from talking about Carrizales’ personal life. Dyer said the teen had two prior contacts with police: He was cited in 2005 for concealing a butcher knife in a backpack at Sequoia Middle School, and his family asked police to come to their home in 2007.
Family members said Carrizales was suspended after the knife incident. “It was his friend’s, but he got in trouble,” said his sister, Elisa Ortega, 27.
In 2007, police came to the Carrizales home because a neighbor was upset with the teen. “I think he was on the neighbor’s roof,” Ortega said. “He’s just a kid, and that’s what kids do.”
Family members and friends mourned Thursday at the Carrizales home.
“Why did the officer have to shoot him?” Carrizales’ father asked in Spanish.
Carrizales suffered from depression, family members said. He had been doing much better since he started taking Lexapro and Geodon in January, the month he enrolled in a special education program at Roosevelt High.
Lexapro is an antidepressant, and Geodon is an antipsychotic drug widely used to treat aggression, according to a Fresno psychiatrist.
Carrizales’ family said he had been taking 10 milligrams of Lexapro in one tablet every morning and 60 milligrams of Geodon at morning and night. Those are low doses, said Dr. Karen Kraus, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and coordinator of child and adolescent training at the University of California, San Francisco-Fresno Medical Education Program.
Lexapro falls into a class of antidepressants that may increase suicidal thoughts or actions in children, teenagers and young adults, Kraus said.
Studies show Geodon — a new antipsychotic drug — is helpful in treating aggression, Kraus said.
“At times it’s explicitly prescribed for impulsive aggression,” she said. But it can lead to volatile mood changes, and some patients respond with aggression, she said.
Kraus said sometimes combining different medications can create additional problems. “But by and large at low doses, carefully applied, one wouldn’t expect those untoward effects,” she said.
A longtime friend said Carrizales had been agitated a few days before the shooting.
“He was depressed all the time,” said Angela Rodriguez, 14. “He just said he heard voices.”
Angela said she has known Carrizales since she was 6, because their mothers are friends. She said she last talked to Carrizales Saturday night when he called several times while she was getting ready to go to her aunt’s birthday party. She said she finally had to turn off her cell phone.
“I don’t know what’s the real story,” she said. “I’m wondering why he hit the officer.”
Ortega, Carrizales’ sister, said her brother could barely read and write. Before he took medication, he was withdrawn and seldom talked, even to relatives and friends.
Carrizales, the youngest of 11 children, had dyslexia and had been on home study before enrolling at Roosevelt, Ortega said. He was not in a gang and had no history of violence, she said.
With the medicine, he recently had started to socialize with his family and few friends, Ortega said. If he was having problems at school, the family had not been advised, she said.
“There were no phone calls, no letters,” Ortega said. “There was no mention from him that an officer made him mad.”
Fresno Bee staff writers Vanessa Colon and Barbara Anderson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 McClatchy Newspapers