Sheriff: Suicidal man believed to have gun wounded by Windsor deputies

A reportedly suicidal man believed to be armed with a gun was shot and wounded Sunday evening by a Windsor deputy as he ran toward deputies at a shopping center, Windsor Police Chief Carlos Basurto said Monday.

The item turned out to be a black metal bike lock with a yellow handle.

The deputy fired three times, hitting Christopher Eastwood, 49, in one shoulder. Deputies then realized Eastwood, who remained on his feet, didn’t have a gun. They moved closer, and when Eastwood refused to get on the ground they subdued him with a Taser shock, Basurto said.

Eastwood, of San Francisco, was treated at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Deputies arrested him on suspicion of assault and resisting arrest and, once he was released from the hospital, booked him into the Sonoma County Jail on $100,000 bail.

The shooting and arrest followed a 5:30 p.m. police pursuit of Eastwood, suspected of driving onto a Windsor sidewalk and nearly hitting a family in the area of Merner Drive and Old Redwood Highway, Basurto said. The caller said the driver was continuing to speed up and down the residential street.

Forty minutes before that call, Petaluma police had alerted law enforcement countywide that a family member suspected Eastwood was driving armed and “threatening suicide by cop,” Basurto said.

Dispatchers put out a countywide be-on-the-lookout report of Eastwood and his gold Volkswagen sedan, warning he could be armed with a handgun, possibly with a yellow or wooden handle.

The subsequent report of the reckless driver in a gold sedan in Windsor led dispatchers to alert deputies the driver could be Eastwood, Basurto said.

As deputies spoke to the family nearly hit by the car, the gold sedan drove by. Deputies got behind it and tried to pull it over but the driver headed north onto Old Redwood Highway and led deputies for about 2 miles north into the busy Lakewood Drive area. The sedan then made a U-turn and headed south on Old Redwood Highway to Alden Lane, where it turned into the Windsor Palms Shopping Center.

“He slows down, slams on his brakes, jumps out of the car and starts rushing our deputies. He is holding something that looks like a gun,” Basurto said.

One deputy reported he saw the man pull out a black object and begin to point it at him, prompting him to pull out his gun and fire, the chief said.

There were several witnesses to the shooting at the shopping center and others who heard the gunfire and saw the arrival of several deputies and came out of nearby businesses to see what was happening.

Basurto declined to name the deputy who fired his gun, describing him only as a veteran. That information would be released after further investigation on the case has been completed, the chief said.

Petaluma police detectives initially were tasked with investigating the shooting as part of a countywide procedure to have outside agencies investigate officer-involved shootings, typically fatal cases. Sheriff’s officials, whose deputies provide police services in Windsor, Sunday night decided to keep the investigation in-house, citing the minor injury involved and because such investigations can task an agency.

Only three agencies in the county are large enough to handle such investigations: Santa Rosa, Petaluma and the Sheriff’s Office.

This is the first officer-involved shooting involving a deputy since April 2015 when there were two shootings in one week. A deputy shot a Guerneville man, hitting him in one shoulder when the man pulled out a gun while negotiating with deputies during a neighbor dispute involving threats. A Sebastopol woman was shot after she rammed her car into three deputies at the end of a high-speed chase. She died two days later.

Last May a Santa Rosa police officer shot a suicidal 15-year-old teen, wounding him in one foot. The teen, who reportedly had researched “suicide by cop,” made a nighttime 911 call about a man with a gun at a city park.

Holding a lookalike pistol pellet gun, he waited for police and was shot after he reportedly refused to put the gun down and raised it toward an officer. A suicide note was found in a pocket.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 707-521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@rossmannreport.