SLO County district attorney: Officer shootings in 2-day Mason Lira manhunt were justified
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday that it completed its review of a series of officer shootings related to the June 2020 manhunt for shooter Mason Lira, finding each of the four shooting incidents leading to Lira’s killing were justified.
“After careful review, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s office has concluded the law enforcement officers who used deadly force did not violate the law, so no charges will be filed against them,” an agency news release says.
With few exceptions, county district attorney’s offices have the responsibility of evaluating all officer-involved shootings that occur within their jurisdiction.
The district attorney’s role is to determine whether, during the course of a shooting incident, any violation of California criminal law was committed by the involved officer or officers.
The review does not directly address issues of policy, training, tactics or civil liability, nor does it make recommendations for best practices or improved outcomes.
The District Attorney’s Office says its review was based on a 70-page report from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, whose investigation included 113 interviews of law enforcement personnel and civilian witnesses, a review of 67 body worn camera and patrol in-unit videos, 30 surveillance and aircraft videos, hundreds of photographs, the collection of 637 items of evidence and location diagramming as well as forensic evaluation and testing of physical evidence.
“Based upon a review of the (Sheriff’s Office’s) final investigative report, and pursuant to the controlling legal principles, it is our legal opinion that there is a lack of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt criminal culpability on the part of the involved officers in any of the four distinct officer involved shooting incidents,” the report concludes. “There is reliable evidence that each officers’ actions were reasonable, necessary and justified under the totality of the circumstances when they shot, or shot at, Mason James Lira on June 10 and June 11, 2020.
The District Attorney’s Office says it has closed its inquiry into these four officer involved shooting incidents.
The report can be found on the agency’s website.
Mentally ill man shot by police after manhunt
Police shot and killed Lira, who allegedly shot and killed a homeless man execution-style in Paso Robles and shot a San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s deputy in the face.
Lira, 26, died during a shootout in Templeton on June 11, 2020, a day after he opened fire on the Paso Robles Police Department and kicked off a multi-day search through the city and into the Salinas riverbed.
By the end of the manhunt, three more officers had been injured and local law enforcement agencies had clashed with Lira a handful of times at locations across the area.
Lira, a homeless man who most recently lived in the Monterey area, had a history of mental illness, his father told The Associated Press.
Lira ambushed the Paso Robles Police Department, killed a 59-year-old homeless man who has yet to be identified near the city’s train station, and shot SLO County Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Dreyfus.
Through much of June 10 and into the night, law enforcement scoured the city for Lira.
That night at around 10:20 p.m., reports of shots fired on Spring Street brought officers to the scene, where they found Lira, county Sheriff Jan Parkinson said at a June 11 news conference. Lira fled into a nearby apartment complex, and despite being surrounded, later escaped into the riverbed and fled south, Parkinson said.
The next time Lira was spotted was around 2 a.m. at the Chevron gas station on Ramada Drive, where he bought an energy drink. He fired upon the officers who responded, Parkinson said, before once again fleeing again into the riverbed.
Then things were quiet as police fanned out in a broad search — until the afternoon of June 11.
At the news conference, Parkinson said authorities formulated a plan to surround and systematically search the riverbed, beginning at the Paso Robles fairgrounds and working south toward Templeton High School.
Around 2 p.m. however, Lira revealed himself from a hiding space in the riverbed near Volpi Ysabel Road and Ramada Drive, shooting an Arroyo Grande Police Department officer who was in the area to help with the search.
According to a city of Arroyo Grande news release and the sheriff, the officer was hit in the calf and suffered a non-life threatening injury.
Police soon converged on the area and surrounded Lira.
According to Parkinson, at that point Lira emerged from hiding once again and scaled a small hill on the riverbank, heading toward a nearby vineyard. He then shot and injured two more officers.
A CHP officer was shot in the chest, though his bullet-proof vest saved him from a more serious injury. And a Kings County deputy was shot in the leg while attempting to help the fallen CHP officer. Both were evacuated from the area and were treated at local hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries.
During that shooting incident, Lira was shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
What the report shows
The Sheriff’s Office report, attached in the District Attorney’s Office memo, contained a detailed narrative of the four separate shooting events related to the “36-hour homicidal crime spree.”
The details reveal that Lira had chased and fired five shots at a civilian near Pine and 11th streets prior to shooting Dreyfus, in an incident that sparked law enforcement’s involvement.
The report says that 13 officers fired their weapons in the final shooting event that killed Lira in a vineyard about 36 hours later.
Lira’s death was confirmed by the county’s medical examiner to be caused by 10 gunshot wounds: six to the body, three to the left arm and one to the left leg. Four bullet projectiles were removed from his body and confirmed to have been fired by officers at the CalPortland yard.
The two firearms Lira possessed, a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, were confirmed stolen from a downtown San Luis Obispo law office on Jun 8, 2020.
A toxicology test found no drugs or alcohol in Lira’s system, the report says.
The report says that a peace officer is justified in using deadly force when the officer believes that such force is necessary to defend against imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person, or to apprehend a fleeing person for any felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury, if the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or serious bodily injury to another unless immediately apprehended.
The report contains snippets of interviews with the 13 officers from various agencies who fired their weapons during the fatal final firefight.
Several officers noted that Lira swung his right arm in the air, and the officers said they either saw a handgun or believed he possessed a weapon, before they fired.
They additionally noted that Lira had begun to run in the direction of vehicle traffic as well as civilians and members of the media who had gathered roughly 500 yards away.
The officers said they either feared for their lives, the lives of their fellow officers, and/or the public’s safety when they fired their weapons.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 3:51 PM.
