The guy who was shot and killed by San Diego police last month during a standoff in a neighborhood near Scripps Ranch was named by the government on Thursday.
An arrest was made for Eric Kulakow, a 59-year-old San Diego man who was shot and killed in the 11600 block of Angelique Street on March 25. At first, his name wasn’t released because the police needed to tell his family.
The sheriff’s office said that SDPD officers were sent to the area around noon after someone reported seeing a man point a gun at pest control workers.
When police arrived, they saw Kulakow standing outside of a house with a semi-automatic gun. They also saw a pest control worker locked in the back of his work truck. A short time after the killing, the sheriff’s office said the man also had a knife on him.
The suspect walked toward the police, who were telling him to drop his gun, while the SWAT team worked to get the pest control worker and nearby neighbors out of the area. A police report said that he pointed the gun at cops and was shot in the upper body by two SWAT snipers.
Due to the injuries he got in the shooting, Kulakow was declared dead at the scene. There were no reports of any other injuries to officers or bystanders during the standoff.
The sheriff’s office later named the officers who fired their guns as Chris Lingenhol and Brandon Jordan. They are in charge of the investigation as part of the county’s policy on officer-involved killings.
The sheriff’s office said Lingenhol has been with the police force for 10 years and is currently posted to the Mid-City Division as a SWAT sniper. Jordan has been a police officer for 17 years and is now a SWAT shooter on the Central Division Patrol.
The Homicide Unit of the sheriff’s office is still looking into more information about what happened.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office will look over the investigation’s results to see if the officers are criminally responsible for what they did. This is how the county handles killings involving police.
The SDPD is also looking into the officers’ use of force from an official point of view.
Anyone with knowledge about what happened that could help the police with their investigations should call the sheriff’s Homicide Unit at 858-285-6330, the after-hours line at 858-868-3200, or 888-580-8477 to leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers.
The killing is the second big event to happen in the area in the past 10 years. In 2015, Kyle Kraska, a local sportscaster, was shot several times in the neighborhood by a house painter who was angry that he had been hired for a job that didn’t go through.
