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| This video image provided by KCBS-TV shows the site of s shooting Friday Oct. 25, 2013 ion Ridgecrest, Calif. A homicide suspect was killed by police on this Mojave Desert highway early Friday after a lengthy pursuit in which the man fired at vehicles and two hostages in his car trunk, authorities said. |
RIDGECREST,
Calif. (AP) -- Sergio Munoz was known around this small desert city
to acquaintances as a personable dad, and to police for his long rap
sheet.
In recent weeks, he began losing the
moorings of a stable life - his job, then his family. Kicked out of the
house, he had been staying at a friend's place, using and dealing
heroin.
Life fully unraveled when Munoz, with
two hostages in his trunk, led officers on a wild chase Friday after
killing a woman and injuring his crash-pad friend. He shot the friend
after he had refused to join what Munoz planned would be a final rampage
against police and "snitches."
Munoz knew the
authorities well enough that after the initial, pre-dawn slaying he
called one patrol officer's cellphone and announced that he wanted to
kill all police in town. Because he would be outgunned at the station he
would instead "wreak havoc" elsewhere, Kern County Sheriff Donny
Youngblood said at a news conference Friday.
Munoz
kept his word, first firing at drivers in Ridgecrest, according to
police, then taking shots at pursuing officers and passing motorists
during a chase along 30 miles of highway that runs through the
shrub-dotted desert about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. He ran traffic
off the road, firing at least 10 times at passing vehicles with a
shotgun and a handgun, though no one was hurt.
In
the end, Munoz pulled over on U.S. 395, turned in his seat and began
shooting into the trunk - which had popped open earlier in the pursuit
to reveal a man and woman inside.
As many as
seven officers opened fire and killed him. The hostages were flown to a
hospital in critical condition, but were expected to survive. Their
names have not been released and police have not said anything about
their relationship to Munoz.
In the
neighborhood where the first shooting happened, people said Munoz was an
affable man who would stop to chat, revealing no signs of inner
turmoil.
"He didn't show any anger," said
Edgar Martinez, who would see Munoz at a nearby gym and said he cleaned
his house several years ago.
Others described him as respectful and humble.
But recently, his life began to crumble.
First,
he became unemployed. According to his Facebook page, Munoz worked at
Searles Valley Minerals, a company that makes products such as borax and
soda ash by extracting a salty mix from beneath a desert lake bed. It
was not clear whether he lost his job at Searles, or another business,
and officials at Searles were unreachable Saturday.
Last
Sunday, Munoz, 39, was arrested again - police found ammunition and a
syringe at the house where the slaying would happen five days later.
Munoz is a felon with convictions dating back to 1994, when he was
sentenced to more than two years in prison for receiving stolen
property. In May, he was arrested for possessing ammunition as a felon,
but the felony charge was dismissed.
After making bail on the latest arrest, Munoz returned to the house where he first started staying about two weeks ago.
A neighbor heard Munoz bemoaning his life, saying he was losing everything due to drugs.
"He was a cool guy," said the neighbor, Derrick Holland. "He was just losing his mind."
Munoz's estranged wife, Sandra Leiva, said that they separated because she finally had enough of his bad choices.
"Tough love and drugs, that's what brought him down," Leiva said.
On Saturday morning, Munoz's 15-year-old daughter, Viviana, reflected on her father's life in a Facebook post.
"Your
such a great dad when you were not on drugs...I remember how you used
always try and teach us how to dance all crazy with your chicken legs
haha," she wrote. "You were a good father and person, you just made a
sad choice."
She promised to watch over her two younger brothers, now that their dad was gone.
Ridgecrest
is a city of about 27,000 people adjacent to the vast Naval Air Weapons
Station China Lake. It sits near U.S. 395, which runs through the
western Mojave, below the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada.
"It's
a small town, pretty much everybody knows everybody," said Ridgecrest
police Sgt. Jed McLaughlin, who himself had arrested Munoz about 10
years ago.
The violence that ended with
Munoz's roadside death began Friday around 5:30 a.m. when Munoz rolled
up the driveway to the house where he had been staying with his friend,
Thaddeus Meier, and Meier's longtime girlfriend.
"We're
going to reduce all of the snitches in town," Munoz told Meier after
rousing him with a knock on the front door, according to Meier's sister,
Dawn, recounting what her brother said from the hospital.
When
her brother declined, Munoz shot him at least twice, then shot and
killed Meier's girlfriend. Her identity has not been released.
Dawn
Meier said she saw Munoz using heroin and dealing the drug out of the
house. She had been staying there with her brother until about a week
ago, when her boyfriend insisted that she move out with her 7-month-old
son due to all the drug-related foot traffic.
She
said her brother called Munoz "a very, very good friend of mine" but
that she is a good judge of character and thought him unpredictable,
"just by the vibes I got."
