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Nearly a week after the videotaped beating of a horse-theft suspect drew national attention to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, separate confrontations with deputies have killed two men.googleoff: all
On Wednesday, April 15, deputies fatally shot 52-year-old Ernesto Flores after he set fire to a house near Montclair and aimed what turned out to be a pellet rifle at officers who’d spent more than an hour urging him to surrender, sheriff’s officials say.googleoff: all
A half-day earlier, 28-year-old vandalism suspect Jospeh Slater died after being pepper-sprayed while resisting arrest at a Highland gas station, sheriff's officials say.googleoff: all
And on April 9, a television station's helicopter crew videotaped the Tasering and a minute-long kicking and beating of 30-year-old horse-theft suspect Francis Jared Pusok.googleoff: all
So far this year, San Bernardino County deputies have been involved in five officer-involved shootings, two of them fatal, said sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman. And three prisoners have died while in the custody of deputies, she said.googleoff: all
The county employs some 1,900 deputies assigned to 15 stations and four main jails spread between the Los Angeles County border and the Colorado River. Spanning 20,160 square miles, the county is larger than the combined area of four states: New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.googleoff: all
About 90 percent of San Bernardino County is desert. And it was on the fringes of the High Desert city of Apple Valley that deputies chased Pusok after he sped away from a house where they were serving an identity theft-related search warrant.googleoff: all
He wasn’t a suspect in that case, and deputies say they’d thought the house was unoccupied.googleoff: all
When Pusok abandoned the car, he stole a horse and continued to elude deputies, sheriff’s officials say.googleoff: all
But he’d fallen off the horse and was lying face-down — with his hands behind his back — during at least much of the beating.googleoff: all
The next day, 10 deputies were suspended from duty pending the outcome of criminal and administrative investigations of the incident.googleoff: all
This week's deputy-involved deaths happened in urban areas.googleoff: all
At 11:35 a.m. Wednesday, deputies from Fontana and Chino Hills were summoned to 11151 Chico Ave., near the border between Montclair and the Los Angeles County city of Pomona, to subdue Ernesto Flores, whom they were told was destroying property and threatening to turn on the gas and ignite the house.googleoff: all
The caller reported Flores was armed with a gun, sheriff's officials say. And deputies reported seeing him inside the house — with what appeared to be a rifle.googleoff: all
“About 1 p.m., he started a fire inside the house, then came to the front door armed with what appeared to be a small-caliber rifle and a knife,” investigators said in a written statement. “Deputies pleaded with him to drop his weapons and surrender, but he ignored all attempts to reason with him.”googleoff: all
So officers tried to subdue him using a shotgun loaded with bean bags.googleoff: all
“He dropped to the ground and quickly brought the rifle up,” according to the sheriff's statement, "and aimed directly at the deputies.”