Video shows deputy fatally shoot machete-wielding man

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Authorities in Northern California released body camera video showing a man covering his eyes with one hand and raising a machete in the air while walking toward his wife and a sheriff’s deputy, before the deputy shot and killed him.

The man was fatally shot on Sept. 28 in the front yard of his Sacramento home after his wife called police, saying her husband had a machete and was suicidal. The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office identified him as Jaime Naranjo Bautista, 55.

The Sacramento Sheriff’s Office released a video Tuesday that shows the deputy arriving at the home and talking to Bautista’s wife outside. Within seconds, Bautista appears at the door and begins to walk toward his wife and the deputy who asks him several times to “put it down.”

Instead, Bautista covers his eyes as and raises the machete and advances toward his wife. The deputy pushes Bautista’s wife to the ground and yells “don’t do it” before firing five shots, less than a minute after arriving at the home.

“Once the deputy was backed up to the fence and the subject continued to ignore the commands and advance towards the deputy and female, the deputy fired his duty weapon striking the subject multiple times,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement accompanying the video.

Bautista was taken to a hospital where he died.

Detectives recovered a two-foot (0.6 meter) long, rusted machete that is shown in an evidence photo included in the video.

The video also includes audio of the 911 call made by Bautista’s wife. The recording begins with a 911 emergency call-taker telling the dispatcher: “Her husband wants to commit suicide, and he has a machete.”

The woman tells the dispatcher she tried to “fight it out of his hand.” She says she is outside the home and her husband is inside. When the dispatcher asks about her husband’s mental health, she says her husband does not have a mental health condition and has never been violent toward anyone. But she did say

The woman also said her husband hadn’t been sleeping well for months and that she had called 911 once before for a welfare check after he accused her of poisoning him, according to the recording.

The deputy, a 4-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, will be placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation, the office said.

The investigation into the incident will be conducted by the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau and Professional Standards Division, and an independent review of the officer-involved shooting will be conducted by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and the Inspector General, it said.