Edgar Espinoza via King's County Sheriff's Office

This Sunday, 35-year-old Edgar Espinoza of Hanford, CA, was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies just after 11:00 P.M. Officers arrived at the scene after several 9-1-1 calls about a man engaging in an aggressive chase with a child. They arrived in the nick of time: As they approached Espinoza’s white Silverado, they saw the frantic child struggling against Espinoza and crying out for help, saying his father was trying to kill him.

Deputies tried to pull the boy out through the truck window, but Espinoza fought back, put his son in a choke hold, and held what officers called a “large military-style knife” to his throat. That’s when one of the deputies fired several rounds, hitting Espinoza.

“Upon being hit by gunfire, Edgar shouted ‘kill me, kill me,’ while attempting to inflict injury to the child,” officials reported to the press. “Noticing Edgar was likely going to inflict serious injury to the child, a deputy fired additional shots and was then successful in rescuing the child.”

After being treated in the hospital for injuries sustained during the event, the boy was reunited with his mother.

“I couldn’t be more proud of their actions,” the sheriff told reporters.

Following his ordeal, the 9-year-old child told the deputies that shortly before the incident, Espinoza had told him, “We are going to die tonight.” The boy also said that Espinoza had a gun in the vehicle.

“These two deputies acted bravely in the face of danger and without hesitation jumped in to save a child’s life,” the sheriff added in the news release. “The child also was very brave in his attempts to flee and immediately alert the deputies on scene that his father was trying to kill him. He is a brave young man and we are grateful that he is safe and back with his mother.”

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37 COMMENTS

  1. ““Upon being hit by gunfire, Edgar shouted ‘kill me, kill me,’ while attempting to inflict injury to the child,” officials reported to the press.”

    “You asked for it, you got it, a dirt-nap”, jackwad…

    • The only bad thing is, it won’t qualify as a ‘Darwin Award’, since his genes were passed on to his kid…

      • Does this count as victim blaming? To say the kid has bad genes because of the sins of his father is pretty despicable. I am normally a pretty snide asshole myself, but knocking down the kid…come on man. Grow up!

        • Do you know ANYTHING about Darwin?
          OP is not blaming the kid, simply explaining that Darwin Awards are about taking yourself out of the gene pool before passing your genes on.

          DUH.

  4. Suicide by cop, pretty common, takes the responsibility away in the criminal’s demented mind, something he hasn’t the courage to do himself.

    • Well, it’s not NYC, so what do you expect. If it had been the NYPD, they would have shot the man, his kid, a passerby, and the dog in the yard across the street.

      • Mark N.,

        Actually, I think it is worse in California. While New York City police have a propensity to inadvertently wound bystanders with an errant shot — wounds which are usually non-fatal — California cops have a propensity to dump multiple magazines into bystanders, hostages, and the wrong person. Reference the deceased hostage in the Stockton bank robbery and high-speed chase a couple years ago, multiple wrong people in the Christopher Dorner fiasco, and the woman in the recent chase and shootout a few months ago. I have not seen anything like that in any other state.

        • Re: Hannibal

          That’s because Ca. has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. You know the ones that keep those evil guns out of criminal hands…..

  7. “The boy also said that Espinoza had a gun in the vehicle.” This incident is a microcosm of the gun-control/mental-health debate. The gun-controller will eagerly point to the fact that the perpetrator had a gun. Yet, the actual threat was “. . . a ‘large military-style knife’ to his throat . . . ”

    Suppose our society were inclined to budget $1 billion to gun-control. Would that budget be better spent on measures to mitigate mental illness?

    Those of us who view the role of the state as best to be minimized should give pause. When mental illness intersects with public security there is no bright line separating public from private interest. The perpetrator was – to be sure – responsible for seeking treatment for his own illness, mental as well as any physical illness.

    Nevertheless, his mental illness was clearly a threat to other members of the public in a way distinguishable from, e.g., heart disease or diabetes. We might search in vein for a constitutional warrant for public taxes invested in mitigating physical disease. Nevertheless, protecting citizens from dangers threatened by others is clearly a public safety responsibility of government.

    I seems disingenuous for government to invest public resources in efforts to strip us from the means of self defense when such resources might more profitably directed toward ensuring that the dangerously mentally ill undergo treatment.

    • MARKPA . well said sir , well said !! It is sad that the gun grabbing , commie types can’t see the facts you point out. American Blind justice !!

    • while i agree with your larger point about the failure to competently address mental illness in America, there is no evidence in the article that that us relevant to this episode.

  9. We need to stop calling these sub humans “people”. anyone who could kill any child, let alone their own, is not deserving of the title human. these are animals. stop giving him a name. he is a meat popsicle in the rough shape of a humanoid. gold star for the cops here. I bet they sleep GREAT tonight knowing they saved a child’s life. All the shit they have been shovelling for the last year probably gets evened out-at least for a day. slow clap.

    • My favorite is when some douchebag has shown their true colors and some ditz on TV calls them a ‘gentleman’ when discussing their latest crime or heinous act.

      Does no one learn the language anymore?

      It’s really simple:
      gentle: kind, polite, friendly, caring.
      Man: male human being.

      Miscreant: scumbag, murderous bastard, killer, vile despicable human excrement.

      • You are much too nice. I would not express my feelings with nearly the same amount of dignity. The ‘M’ word would certainly be in order here.

  10. A search through databases should provide a profile of the likeliest killers/shooters. They could then enact legislation requiring that extra attention could be provided for those more likely to kill or shoot people.

    What I call common sense People control. Of course we don’t allow profiling or blaming the actual actors in any shooting event.

    But I’d like to see someone with some guts stand up and mention this somewhere and get on the news with it just to give people some thoughts to ponder.

  11. The cops took a chance shooting him because the dead guys family will say it was excessive force and the kids mother might complain about the danger to her son and the trauma he went through. No shoot is ever issue free.

  12. The kid gets some of his genes from his mother. Survivor type, defined as being one that survives. The responding officers will sleep well, they saved the kid. Except for the very, very lucky, the aftermath of these situations pop up and yell, “gotcha”. -30-

  13. ladies, don’t let men with facial or neck tattoos knock you up. facial and neck tattoos are God’s way of warning you that the bearer is a stupid, violent loser.

    • Men, don’t let women with facial, forearm, and neck tattoos seduce you. Facial, forearm, and neck tattoos are God’s way of……

    • I have a cousin with a particularly wry wit. One day while we were talking a fellow came down the street with a large tattoo in some obscure font visible on his neck. I asked my cousin what the tattoo said, without looking up he replied “Unemployable”.
      I submit that whatever it actually said, my cousin understood what it actually meant quite well enough.

  16. Well, this is why “anyone” might “need” a gun.

    Because in some situaitons the factory-issue abilities of peaceful, responsible people aren’t enough to stop really bad things from ahppeneing. If we trust people’s judgment, at all, we don’t mind that they have power-augmenting enhancements.

    Even those evil, black killing machines, perhaps with the folding things that go up, or high-capacity clipazines.

  17. I wonder if that cop would have had his musket reloaded in time to finish the job before the bad guy finished the kid? (Because nobody needs more than a musket.)

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