Image via Youtube from Phoenix PD. Capture by Boch.

Some people just don’t have the Christmas spirit. Others can get downright surly – or homicidal during the holidays. Just such a thing happened early on Christmas day as Phoenix cops say a man tried to run over his girlfriend and some others with his SUV.  He even returned for a second round, but a Phoenix officer shot him repeatedly to end the threat.

Phoenix PD released the bodycam video from the incident, including the 911 call. Then the action cuts to the officers walking towards the house where the attack occurred only to see the (allegedly) intoxicated aggressor return.

Early on, it looks like there’s door doorbell cam video that shows what appears to be a homeowner holding a pistol at his side. That’s not a bad plan against a homicidal attacker behind the wheel of a vehicle. However, standing around outside doesn’t seem like the most prudent course of action in that circumstance.

AZCentral picked up the story when more details became available.

A 25-year-old man was released from the hospital and booked into jail on suspicion of several charges after a Christmas Day incident in which he was shot by a Phoenix police officer, officials said Tuesday.

The incident happened just after 1 a.m. Friday when police officers responded to reports of aggravated assault and domestic violence at a home near 51st Avenue and Osborn Road.

The caller reported that the suspect, identified on Tuesday as 25-year-old Samuel Vasquez, tried to run over the victim with his vehicle. Vasquez rammed a parked van and then fled in his vehicle prior to police arrival, Phoenix police spokesman Sgt. Andy Williams said.

As officers walked toward the residence, they saw Vasquez’s vehicle drive over the curb and toward people gathered in the front yard, Williams said.

In the end, Mr. Vasquez should count himself as a very lucky man. Lucky he didn’t end up dead on Christmas.

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31 COMMENTS

    • What, folks who run other people down in their cars?

      I’m pretty sure citizens are well represented in that demographic.

      • The problem with sites like that is that they only present one side of the story.

        I live across the street from a trailer park populated by predominantly white folks. If I bring up a map of registered sex offenders in my city, there is a thick cluster of them in that trailer park. But if I apply the same search to predominately poor Hispanic areas of my metropolitan area, I don’t find any such clusters.

        Does that mean all trailer park denizens are sex offenders, and all Hispanics are upright citizens? Hardly. But it does mean that small samples of a single population are not reliable indicators.

        As you might have noticed, I do not consider myself a racist. But I do consider myself a culturalist. It’s all about environment, not heredity. If the Taliban raises a white kid, that white kid will most likely turn out Taliban.

      • If they are citizens, where are you going to deport them to?

        So long as humans are a diverse species, people will always seek to differentiate themselves – this includes prejudging people not like them.

        Trying to eliminate racism is like trying to get everyone to have the same favorite color or favorite food. Good luck with that.

        We’ve established a body of law that (mostly) does not discriminate. So long as we are all equal under the law – that is the best you can do.

        Most people these days looking for “equality” don’t want that – they want special treatment.

    • Not “Illegal” Just future DNC voters without up to date paperwork
      and now that joe is in office and the other branches of lawmaking are DNC, you can expect 30 million plus BS ‘amnestys” for DNC votes to be coming

  2. Here’s hoping he gets lots of “Christmas candy” from his fellow inmates.

    God Bless Us, Everyone.

  3. He’s trying to run you over with a vehicle and you continue to remain outdoors. Not a good choice.

  5. Dispatcher: “What do you mean, he’s trying to run over your niece?”

    When time is precious, count on folks like this to waste it.

  7. Obviously that dude is unstable, but alcohol is overrated. I hear people talk about roid rage and have to laugh. Testosterone can increase aggression, but roid rage is really a myth. If you’re already an obnoxious gym rat douche, then steroids aren’t going to make you more pleasant to be around. What’s real is alcohol rage. Ask any cop.

    • “Roid rage” is overstated but it is real in some circumstances.

      Mixing someone who already has serious anger issues and/or TBI with long-term steroid abuse, by which I mean overuse for years, creates people who really do “rage”.

      I would tend to agree that it’s not “the steroids” they’re just part of the puzzle but they can, and do sometimes, push people over the edge.

      That said, booze is probably the worst drug out there.

  8. The skills of pointing a vehicle at someone and flooring it are far more common today than aiming and firing a handgun or rifle for that matter, yet cars are OK, while guns are evil.

  11. Dad always said “If you do the job right the first time, you wont have to come back to do it again.”

  12. One of my Son’s friends was killed by that friends girlfriend when she ran over him with a car.

  14. Anyone else find themselves thinking that dude might have a legit reason? That shrieking FFS…

    j/k, of course…

  15. Is it me or do 911 operators ask too many irrelevant questions? Aren’t they trained to quickly get to get the who, what, when and where while getting helpful info – like is is he alone in the car?

  16. A local Utah ‘spews’ site recently did their year end state homicides wrap-up. Made sure the headline mentioned how 3/4 of them used a firearm (as if that’s just another fact with no political connotation).
    I made a lot of money making statistics apples to apples, so they could be used for costly decisions. So, problem with the biased media homicide firearm attribution was they also included LE and self-defense firearm fatalities as homicides. Again, just another innocent ‘fact’ playing with the semantics of homicide vs. the more relevant criminal homicide.
    What they didn’t include were annual homicides related to child abuse (most predominantly due to physical trauma) or vehicular homicide. Vehicular homicide is not just someone intentionally using a vehicle as a deadly weapon. Apples to apples stats relating to public safety and criminal use of vehicles should include all deaths that result in criminal homicide charges against a driver (DUI, criminal negligence, recklessness, pursuit crashes and such). It’s significant and not always distinguished in the violence, weapons debate .

  18. Maybe if he’d let the guy get one good ram in we wouldn’t have had to hear “DON’T SHOOT HIM” screeched so many times by the victim of attempted murder (who will be back with the guy next week anyway)

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