When Aleyna Enriquez heard the first shot, she knew Chula Vista police had fired a beanbag round at her father. She knew it was a less-lethal option as police negotiated with him as he held them at bay last month, and knew he was still alive. Then she heard the volley of gunfire.
“That’s when it hit me really hard,” she said. She and her mother were three doors down as her father, retired Navy sailor Carlos Enriquez, was shot and killed during a stand-off with police outside the family home April 19.
Maria Esther Enriquez, Carlos’ wife of 32 years, said she just re screaming. “We had no idea that could happen to him,” she said. “If we knew, we would never call 911.”
Enriquez family attorney Gene Iredale said the 56-year-old combat veteran — he had served in the Iraq War — was in the midst of a mental health crisis at the time, that he had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety related to his service and post-traumatic stress disorder. On Wednesday, the attorney ed Enriquez’s wife and daughter at a news conference in downtown San Diego. He pressed for Chula Vista police to quickly release video of the incident, including from the cameras police wore during the incident and the drone flying overhead.
Law enforcement investigators said Enriquez was fatally shot after he pointed a gun at police.
“We want to see there’s evidence — evidence in the form of video, evidence taken from a camera hovering above the scene,” Iredale said. He later said, “We want it, and we want it now.”
Chula Vista police issued a statement Wednesday, noting the “recordings are being compiled and a critical incident video containing these recordings will be released on or before June 3.”
That date marks 45 days from the incident. Since 2019, California requires law enforcement agencies to release within 45 days the body-worn camera and other footage from “critical incidents,” including when an officer opens fire, unless doing so would substantially interfere with an active investigation.
Family friend Livier Lazaro, commander of a local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter, called Enriquez “my brother in arms. He was joyful, full of life, smart, helpful, driven, an amazing father and husband, because he loved his family so much.” She told reporters she was shocked to hear how Enriquez died. “He’s not an aggressive man at all.”
“We cannot be scared to call 911 in crisis. We want help. We don’t want to end up dead,” she said. She later said, “His family deserves these answers. The lives of future veterans in crisis need these answers.”
About 5:40 a.m. April 19, police received a report of a family disturbance at a home on County Vistas Lane near Bonita Canyon Drive. The description of events comes from the San Diego police homicide unit, which is investigating the shooting as part of a countywide agreement to prevent departments from investigating themselves.
Chula Vista police arrived at the home and found several family outside. They also learned the man, now identified as Enriquez, had access to guns. Police requested to have an armored vehicle and a drone at the scene.
Enriquez came outside of the home, his hands in his pockets, San Diego police homicide Lt. Jon Dungan said in a news release shortly after the incident. Chula Vista police ordered him to put his hands up.
When Enriquez pulled his hands out of his pockets, he dropped a firearm on the front steps. Dungan said Chula Vista officers ordered him to walk away from the gun, “but he instead sat down and put the handgun on his lap.”
Dungan said that after Enriquez failed for several minutes to put his hands up, he was shot once with a beanbag round. It knocked him back, and the gun fell out of his lap.
According to Dungan, as Enriquez began to sit up, he picked up the gun and pointed it in the direction of police officers. Three of them opened fire, striking Enriquez multiple times.
Police found one gun near him, and a second one in his waistband, Dungan said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Iredale noted that two of the officers who shot Enriquez had each been part of a federal lawsuit arising from prior incidents that resulted in the death of a person in a mental health crisis.
