Man with knife shot, killed in Rio Linda by Sacramento sheriff’s deputies after crisis call

Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a man Saturday morning during a mental health crisis call in Rio Linda.

The shooting occurred about 8:30 a.m. at a home in the 6500 block of Campanile Street, said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Amar Gandhi. He said the man’s family members and roommates had called 911 because the man was suicidal and had been cutting himself in a bathroom at the residence.

When deputies arrived, they encountered the bloodied man in the garage of the home, holding a knife, Gandhi said. He said deputies who were on the sidewalk began negotiating with the man, identified by his sister as Christopher Gilmore, 38, to drop the weapon.

The Sheriff’s Office late Saturday confirmed Gilmore as the man involved.

Within minutes the man “exited through the garage still holding that knife (and) was actually hit multiple times with a less-lethal shotgun round, which were actually pretty ineffective,” Gandhi said. “He continued to advance, got within feet of a deputy and an officer-involved shooting ensued.

“From there, unfortunately, the suspect was hit several times and did die at the scene.”

No one else was injured, he said.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, Gilmore had a run-in with police officers in Folsom on St. Patrick’s Day when he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, possession of methamphetamine, resisting arrest and graffiti vandalism. He was released on his own recognizance following his court arraignment, according to deputies. A search of Sacramento Superior Court records also showed more than a dozen felony cases dating to 2003 involving Gilmore.

But the quick timeline of events Saturday morning rattled the man’s sister, who had called for a paramedic and said deputies could have done more to subdue the man without resorting to deadly force.

Fire personnel had been called to the home minutes before, according to Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District dispatch logs, but Bobbie Gilmore said four deputies arrived first after she and her brother’s roommates had coaxed him from the bathroom, where he had previously been unresponsive.

She said deputies could have done more to help her brother. She said her brother had a history of mental health issues and was in a similar situation nearby a few months before, in which authorities had talked him off a bridge along Raley Boulevard.

“It was a cry for help, and I told the cops that. They didn’t need to kill him,” she said.

Gilmore said her brother had been holding a “small blade” and not a knife, describing a weapon that was less than two inches long, and was “trying to hurt nobody.”

“He never brandished it to the cops and was slicing himself. He’s hurting himself. Nobody else.”

“They murdered my brother. They murdered him. He wasn’t even talking to them,” she said, motioning to where deputies had been behind the crime scene tape and a tent that had been erected as homicide detectives took over the investigation.

“When he was falling (after having been hit with the less-lethal rounds), they could’ve Tased him,” she said of the her brother, who was naked and bloodied from self-inflicted wounds. “They could have done anything. They could have pepper-sprayed him. ... They didn’t have to kill him.”

Gandhi said that while the investigation remains ongoing, deputies are trained to de-escalate dangerous situations but “unfortunately, this action was kind of brought to us.

“Our ultimate goal in this ... we’ll stay as long as we need,” he said. “As long as the subject is willing to talk to us, is willing to engage in some sort of discussion, we’ll talk and we don’t want this to ever happen.”

“You’ve got less-lethal rounds, you’re talking within split-second decisions. ... We try every mitigating factor we can before having to go to lethal force,” Gandhi added.

This was the third officer-involved shooting for the Sheriff’s Office this month.

The Gilmore incident comes eight days after deputies fired upon an armed standoff subject in Fair Oaks. Eric Oneal Smith was ultimately taken into custody. He is accused of firing into an apartment complex before turning his gun on deputies during a standoff that lasted more than seven hours on March 15.

Radio dispatches monitored by The Sacramento Bee indicated Smith might have been experiencing a mental health crisis at the time. The 36-year-old made his first appearance in court Tuesday to face multiple felony charges in connection with the incident.

On March 5, an 18-year-old man was wounded by gang suppression unit detectives near the Fruitridge Community and Aquatics Center in south Sacramento after an attempt to conduct a traffic stop. The man, who survived the shooting, had tried to run from deputies while holding a gun, the Sheriff’s Office said. Authorities have not yet identified that man.

The Sheriff’s Office’s professional standards division will investigate the shooting, which is standard practice. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office will conduct its own review of the shooting. The Sheriff’s Office is expected to release a community briefing video that will include body camera video and other information, in compliance with state law.