ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A suspect in an armed robbery yelled that he had a gun before he was shot and fatally wounded by a police officer during a chase that ended in front of an Albuquerque grocery store, authorities said.
Police reviewed portions of body camera footage from the June 16 shooting involving Richard Rivera with reporters during a briefing Thursday. The video shows an officer stopping the stolen van Rivera and an alleged accomplish were riding in before chasing Rivera toward the store’s entrance.
The officer yelled for him to stop. Rivera kept running and yelled: “I have a gun. I have a gun.”
The sprint toward the grocery store followed a vehicle chase during which police say Rivera fired at officers with a 9mm handgun that he allegedly used to rob a Verizon store and its customers earlier that day.
Surveillance camera footage shows Rivera looking back and reaching for his right hip before the officer fires six shots. Rivera was hit in the back, buttocks and legs and later died at a hospital.
Police Lt. Ray Del Greco said Rivera’s actions led the officer “to believe that the potential harm to innocent civilians in that Smith’s grocery store was so great that the need to utilize the force that he did there was what was needed at the time.”
Police later searched the van, where Del Greco said they found a cellphone taken from the earlier Verizon store robbery, a gun and empty shell casings.
According to federal court documents, the shooting ended what was believed to be a string of armed robberies by Rivera and Jennifer Rael, 39, the woman who was in the van during chase.
Police used one of the phones taken during the Verizon robbery to track the suspects.
Rael told officers that when Rivera noticed that police were following him, he told her “it’s on” as he pulled a gun from his waistband. Rael told police he fired so many rounds at police that she couldn’t keep count, Del Greco said.
Police tried to stop the van three times. At one point, the video footage shows Officer Jonathan O’Guin crash into the van, get out and take cover behind his vehicle. He fired at the van after he saw Rivera point a gun at a fellow officer.
The chase ended near the grocery store, where the video shows O’Guin running after Rivera and firing the shots as the suspect approached the front entrance.
The fatal shooting was the third by O’Guin. In 2016, he shot a man who was armed with a rifle and was yelling at officers to shoot him. He shot another armed man in 2017 during a foot chase.
Federal investigators helped Albuquerque police identify Rivera and Rael. Rivera, 47, was wanted on a felony warrant for armed robbery. He also had a long criminal history that included convictions for armed robbery and bank robbery.
Court documents show Rivera and Rael, who had known each other for about six weeks, were believed to have been involved in two Albuquerque bank robberies and the robbery of another Verizon store.
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