The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has determined a group of San Jose Police officers last year lawfully shot and killed a man who, during a shooting spree that left one man badly wounded, aimed his handgun at two other officers.

An apparently suicidal and intoxicated 50-year-old Roberto Rivera, Jr. told a crowd of people in a taqueria, “Everyone here is about to get U-Visas” – an immigration status that is sometimes given to violent crime victims.

Then, a video shows, he fired several rounds into the ceiling. After randomly shooting a man in the neck, Rivera Jr. confronted a group of police officers. He shouted, “Shoot me!” They refused. Then he pointed his gun at officers.

In the public report, prosecutor Rob Baker concluded: “Rivera’s …refusal to drop his gun, and deliberate motion pointing his firearm in the direction of officers …, make clear his intent that night was to commit ‘suicide by cop.’ Officers …. had no other choice but to employ lethal force in defense of their fellow officers.”

The District Attorney’s Office is tasked with deciding if lethal force by county law enforcement is legal. Officers may by law use potentially lethal force if they or someone else is in imminent danger.

Prosecutors gave this account of the incident:

• The night of Sept. 8, 2024, Rivera sent suicidal group texts to his family. At 9:21pm, Rivera walked into a taqueria at the back of a strip mall on Senter Road in San Jose with a loaded semiautomatic handgun and fired multiple rounds into the ceiling. He then walked out of the restaurant and into the parking lot, approached a nearby truck, and shot the driver in the neck.
• Rivera next walked toward Senter Road but stopped halfway in front of a 7-11 store as four San Jose police cars pulled up short of the driveway. Facing six armed officers to his left and right, all of whom had guns pointed at him, Rivera aimed his gun to the sky and yelled, “Shoot me!”
• The officers refused and ordered Rivera to drop his gun. For the next 20 seconds, the officers pleaded with Rivera to surrender. Instead, he began a countdown and slowly lowered his gun and pointed it directly at officers positioned behind a car to his right.
• At that moment, officers Cesar Fernandez, Jessie Gifford, Juan-Carlos Jerez, and Brett Vranich, believed he intended to shoot and kill their fellow officers, and they discharged multiple rounds from their department-issued firearms, killing Rivera.
• After Rivera was down, police sent a K9 dog to pull him away from his nearby weapon. The dog latched on to Rivera’s throat twice. However, the medical examiner deemed it was the police bullets and not the injuries caused by the K9 that killed the suspect. A toxicology analysis showed that Rivera had methamphetamine in his system and that his blood alcohol level was .18%, more than two times the legal limit to drive.

Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.