A man was hospitalized after an officer-involved shooting in Mesa on Friday when he allegedly charged at police with a knife, authorities said. The incident unfolded around 8:30 a.m. after Mesa police received reports of a stolen landscape vehicle from Tempe, equipped with a GPS tracker.
Mesa police located the vehicle near Stapley Drive and Main Street, outside of a home on Mahoney Avenue. A 25-year-old man later identified as Pedro Garcia, emerged from the house and moved to quickly enter the stolen vehicle. Garcia subsequently lunged at officers with a knife from about 25 feet away, according to documents obtained by Arizona’s Family.
In response, officers fired their guns three times at Garcia but missed, after which they deployed less-than-lethal bean bags to subdue him. Garcia sustained minor injuries, was briefly hospitalized, and will soon face booking into jail on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer and vehicle theft charges.
Detailed in police interrogation, Garcia claimed to have stolen the vehicle to go "joy riding," visiting his ex-girlfriend in Mesa. He admitted to trying to provoke the officers into killing him, telling police, "I knew the officers were scared and had no regrets," as reported by Arizona’s Family. Further, Garcia provocatively advised the officers "to aim better."
"Right now we only know that two officers fired their duty weapons. There were no other officers in the area, so we only have their word of what happened and we haven’t interviewed them yet. We still need to look at body-worn camera, which we have not done, and we need to find witnesses that may have seen the shooting," Brandi Myers with the Mesa Police Department explained in a statement obtained by Arizona’s Family. The shooting marks the 10th officer-involved shooting in Maricopa County and the 14th in Arizona this year.
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